Memoir from Antproof Case

By Mark Helprin
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 514 pages, $34.00
Reviewed by Jaime Smith

As I write I can hear my wife laughing aloud in the next room as she reads this book, and I remember doing the same a few weeks ago while I was engrossed in this cunning fictional memoir. Hilarity bubbles throughout the novel, but it is nonetheless a work that also engenders profound despair. This oxymoronic juxtaposition of powerful and conflicting emotions is a tribute to the superlative craft of the author.

The narrator is a monomaniacal American octogenarian who, having committed a spectacular crime, lives in exile in Brazil and is now composing his memoirs in a park overlooking the Rio de Janeiro harbour. As each page is composed, it is placed in an antproof case for protection. The memoirs themselves constitute the autobiography of one of the most remarkable fictional characters of this age. His life story is a microcosm of the twentieth century, his achievements and his crimes mirror the events and values of our times, and his retribution may be said to fit the criminal if not the crime itself. And the "antproof case" teaches us something about the expectation of security in this world.

His singular obsession (which, to whet your appetite, I will not further specify) is plausible, and it results in some of the most hilarious events imaginable, but the novel is not really about his obsession other than in a metaphorical sense. What, then, is the book about? "The human condition," one might reply, but that is too general to be satisfactory. Perhaps "retribution for hubris" narrows it down somewhat, along with the "nonviability of the fantasy of security", but these summary phrases cannot adequately convey a sense of the powerful feelings and events that contribute to the texture of the story. There is murder, lust, horror, greed, theft, war, hatred, loss, and despair -- but also bravery, resignation, beauty, and love.

Embedded in the suffocating mixture of these powerful emotions and events is the cleansing and liberating sensation of mirth, an extravagant and outrageous hilarity of truly Nabokovian intensity. To laugh audibly, to guffaw, to roar with laughter until there are tears in one's eyes, to insist on reading passages aloud and sharing the fun with a companion is a rare response to any novel these days, but all this is evoked with regularity by Memoir from Antproof Case. This book would make a dandy movie, but so much of the fun lies in the language of the written work that I cannot imagine how a screenplay could capture the spirit of this extraordinary novel (but if some director is willing to attempt to film it, I would go without hesitation to see it).

Meanwhile there is the book to re-read, each delicious turn of phrase to be savoured like a morsel of Belgian chocolate. Good grief, how can the human tragedy be so much fun at times? That, of course, is the magic of literature, when there is a resonance between the mind of the author and that of the reader. Mark Helprin is in distinguished company with this creation of his; may he continue to produce many more masterworks like Memoir from Antproof Case.

Jaime Smith is a Whitehorse, Yukon, psychiatrist.



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