Powerful Novels: The Ocean and the Stars by Mark Helprin

Other posts on this topic:

Power in novels

Powerful novels: Night Watch

Powerful novels: From All False Doctrine

Powerful Novels: The Crane Husband

All right, so I just finished reading The Ocean and the Stars yesterday.

I read the first 30% of it very slowly, then the rest of it, whoosh! I see why the editorial blurb at Amazon says this book is fast paced. I was right to doubt this, because it is not either fast paced – not the long, long, long buildup, which you honestly ought not ignore.

Then the Athena sinks the Sahand (Spoiler! But it would be a much shorter book if the Athena failed in her first real battle and went down with all hands, so, I mean.) and after that the pace picks up, with one terrifying situation after another. Then there’s a long falling-action period and a happy ending. (which may be a spoiler, but hopefully a welcome one.)

I’ll be thinking about this book for a while. The Ocean and the Stars is very (very) different from A Winter’s Tale. Both are literary, I suppose, but the latter occupies the intersection between literary, historical, and fantasy, while the former occupies the intersection between literary, war stories, and something which I suppose I’ll call uplifting fiction, since there’s no recognized term for it, but “UpLit” is one term that is occasionally used.

Also, this is a side note, but you know what I thought, quite early on? That you could easily lift practically the entire plot of The Ocean and the Stars and transmute the story into Military SF. Then, later, I realized you could actually cut the plot to pieces and transmute The Ocean and the Stars into at least two different Military SF novels, maybe three. This would be fun to do! It’s just like reading a David Weber story except much better written at the sentence and paragraph level.

Anyway: let’s have some quotes! Because when I say much better written at the sentence and paragraph level, I should probably support that. Here are a handful of passages that I highlighted:

***

The sea was speaking to him in silence. Its message was: as your spirit rises to fill the place of appetites and illusions, take stock and be comforted, for all time is lost in the oceans and the stars. You’ve left behind the things of life on land that shield you from a truth the sea will not let you forget – that you are first and last a spirit, that you are alone, and that this can be borne.

***

They took refuge in the Garden District, lost in it and as separated from the continent and all its cares as if they were at sea. The vegetation that surrounded them had a life of its own: it moved in the wind, it folded and unfolded, furling at night and unfurling in the sun. Perpetually fragrant, it engaged in a duet with raindrops and strong breezes.

***

It was strange, but she felt that both he and she would have been essentially the same had they lived in any era of history, never quite fitting in if only because they were quietly adamantine in regard to what they believed was beautiful, right, and true, and their conviction was thoroughly independent of the pressures, fashions, and disappointments of their life and times.

***

Words were soon to leave him, and this he regretted. The last of them he heard as if spoken by wind and water, and saw as if written in the air: In heartbreak and in memory I am fixed upon the ocean, always the ocean, to which everything flows as it returns in rivers and rainfall and through quiet coastal marshes where waves dance in the reeds.

***

… he watched the plane race down the runway, increasing its speed until it gave itself to the air, rose up, and began a steady climb against a sky so deep and blue it pulsed against the eyes. The course of its travel and the line of its rise conformed like music to those underlying ratios of the heart that, though unseen, determine everything. And though unseen they leave their evidence in the fragile, quickly vanishing traces of friction when the world’s heartbreak is met with love and courage.

***

I highlighted the above passages. Then I checked popular highlights. There are ten or so passages that are listed, of which I also highlighted two. The most highlighted passage has a hundred sixty-five highlights. Fewer than one out of a hundred readers highlight anything, as far as I can tell, so that’s a lot.  The passage in question conforms to the general tendency for the most-highlighted passages in a novel to be advice, often very direct advice. Here it is:

If you cease to think well of yourself because you shine in the eyes of others, but, rather, do whatever it is you do out of interest and delight and discipline, such a great burden will be floated from your shoulders as you cannot imagine, and the world will appear as wonderful as it is to a child.

Generally speaking, readers do seem to pick good advice to highlight.

***

This novel is powerful, with part of the power coming from the skilled prose, part from the iconic nature of the protagonist, and part from the theme of selflessness, courage, and intelligent resolve leading to ultimate and timeless victory regardless of transient defeat. I hope I put that adequately. I also want to reiterate that the story is not a tragedy because I don’t want that sentence to lead anyone to think maybe it is. It isn’t. But if it were, though I wouldn’t have liked it nearly as well personally, this theme would have remained unmarred by the tragic ending.

The whole story is also wrapped around the theme of the centrality of love in bringing out the best in people who are already admirable, and besides that the reader is continually shown that admirable people draw those around them to become better people. At some point, someone here — sorry, I don’t remember who — said it would be nice to point out novels where the protagonist causes other characters to become better people. I don’t think I ever wrote that post, partly because it’s hard to think of examples. Well, this novel is an example.

***

This book would make a superb choice for a class on “the novel,” by which I don’t mean a class focused on reading classic novels or popular novels, but a class that focuses on how novels are put together – on thinking about what a novel is, what makes a novel good or great or powerful or successful. I don’t mean commercially successful. I mean in terms of succeeding at the job of being a novel, of doing what it is trying to do. There are lots of reasons The Ocean and the Stars would be a great choice for that.

First, this novel has a tremendous amount of telling in it, I mean a huge amount, especially at the beginning. This is telling as it should be done – beautiful and effective – and of course I don’t mean “as it should be done in all novels by all authors.” I mean that if you’re going to have a huge amount of telling, this is an illustration of how to make that work. It’s a great counterexample for any advice that telling is inferior or something to avoid or whatever. There are lots of great counterexamples, obviously. This is one that is particularly beautifully written.

Second, there’s both a prologue and an epilogue, and that’s always an interesting choice in terms of construction of the story. But beyond that, there is, as I say, a really long lead-in and then long falling action, so it’s like nearly half the story is part of the prologue or epilogue, and that’s interesting too.

Third, there’s an interesting moment that made me blink, where Helprin is going to do the David Weber thing (I could also call that the Tom Clancy thing) and tell you ALL ABOUT the Athena’s design and hardware and everything, but there is a link inviting the less interested reader to skip that part. I’ve never seen that in a literary novel. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it before at all, ever. I suppose it’s not there in the paper editions. How much does the reader skip by tapping the link? Two percent. I checked just out of sheer curiosity. Is that a good idea or does it jar the reader out of the story? I think if you had a link like that in a faster-paced story, it would be a terrible idea. But then, if you’re writing a faster-paced story, you wouldn’t pause to explain the hardware in detail. Or at least, you shouldn’t. Anyway, it would be something interesting to discuss.

Fourth, that whole thing about is a novel character-driven or plot-driven or both, this novel would be great to encourage readers to think about that. Are the characters well-rounded and complex? No. Are the characters effectively drawn and compelling? Yes. What makes that work? Well, this is one of those novels where the protagonist is (a) an original protagonist, and (b) iconic. Steven Rensselaer is absolutely iconic from the moment we meet him. He doesn’t change a jot, except for falling in love (during the long lead-in). Which is not about him changing. It’s about him stepping up more surely as the person he already is. All the characters are basically shown like this: from Katy right on through to a seaman whose name we barely remember, all the characters are very firmly themselves. This is really interesting! And neat! And worth noticing and discussing, in terms of does it work? (Yes.) And, is it different from the way most authors handle characterization? (Absolutely yes.) And, how does this suit advice about how to handle characterization and questions about what it means to be character-driven, since the plot is totally determined by who Rensselaer is as a person, but Rensselaer is drawn in adamantine lines that never shift a millimeter.

So, then, is the story plot-driven?  No. That’s why about 45% of the book is slow and leisurely. The fast-paced part is very fast! But the long, slow lead-in and the long falling action should indicate to anybody that this is really not a plot-driven story – or at least, that if it is, that’s because there are two plots that matter: the fast adventure plot in the middle and the much slower framing plot wrapped around the adventure story.

I would actually say that this novel is idea-driven, or philosophy-driven. That it is in fact message fiction, with the message beautifully wrapped within a compelling story. That the story is trying to do two things: first, hook the reader into a journey with beautiful writing plus this iconic protagonist; and second, pull the reader through the journey with this exciting war story and then have the reader come out the other side feeling differently about what matters in life and why.

Long before, he had made peace with the fluid and timeless sea, where comfort is unneeded and unknown. Long before, he had understood that even in a ship full of men, at sea one is alone; that only a heart that has been broken can be full; and that even in every kind of unforgiving desert there is nonetheless infinite love always speaking, always apparent, always appealing. So he kept on running and would not give up.

Helprin put a lot of what he believes into this novel, and he did it with tremendous conviction and beautiful writing, in a novel that is also just put together in a really interesting way. I don’t suppose that most readers think all that much about the structure, the pacing, the double plot, any of that — though I do expect some readers are like: Way too slow, DNF, or whatever, because you don’t have to think about any of that to perceive it. But I do think writers who are used to thinking about structure, maybe writers who also beta read for other authors, would probably notice that this novel is just interesting.

I suspect that Helprin thought he could get away with writing a book like this also implies conviction. Structurally, this novel is unusual for commercial fiction. Thematically, it’s unusual for literary. Yet here Helprin is, writing this novel without the slightest regard for, basically, any modern conventions and certainly no regard for any of the common advice about writing. Very much worth a look, and if you find it slow going, I promise you that when the adventure plot picks up, the book becomes unputdownable.

Also, the day after I finished this book, I bought this one:

And, by the way, the first review, by R. Pryor, demonstrates how to write a great review. I read that review and immediately bought this book.

… That’s what the book’s about on the surface. But in every paragraph, every line, and every word, what it’s REALLY about is the necessity to live life by a code, by a set of values that, if you believe you have a soul, you can’t ever surrender or compromise. It’s about living life as if the good were always eventually, someday, rewarded, evil always punished, and we all lived forever, despite the fact that none of those propositions is true. We all know the good and the beautiful are sometimes defeated utterly, and we all die, and this book is kind of an extended answer to those bleak truths. It’s also, in itself, as beautiful as a hand-painted porcelain vase. Harry, the protagonist, is about as quietly tough as it’s possible for a man to be, but he also has an eye for beauty that really only Mark Helprin could have, and an open, lively intelligence and curiosity about the world that make him relatable to the ordinary reader.