New York, Ten Winters Later

I have a master's degree in creative writing, which is one of the best things I've ever done. Surrounding myself with writers for two years and getting myself into the head space that a writer needs were permanent gifts to myself. I'm not sure that I ever would have done it, though, had I not been told by a creative writing professor in undergrad that I had the goods for it. I try to remember that every day in my role as a teacher. Students remember the things you say to them. They hold on to the vision you have for their lives, especially if they struggle to have a vision for themselves.

Specifically, that professor told me that my writing was too advanced for his class, that I belonged in a graduate seminar, and that my style reminded him of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. At the time, I had not heard of Helprin, and I was too busy with reading for school to do much pleasure reading, so I didn't seek him out. But the name stuck with me, and especially the title of the book, because I really love many things about winter.

Two and a half years later, I was living in New York City. Then I started buying a lot of books. It wasn't really something I'd done much of in previous seasons of life, for many reasons. One of the first books I bought was Winter's Tale. I wish I could say that it was the very first, but I don't think it was. I didn't know how much it was going to impact my life, so I don't think I attached a lot of ceremony to its purchase. I am fairly certain that I bought it from the now-defunct Borders, which was in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. And it changed my life. I've read it every winter since.

This post will tell you more about why I love the book so much. The reasons have changed a bit since I've moved away from New York, and actually, it's not quite as much fun to read as it was there, which makes me really sad. I loved being able to read about certain things in the city and then be in those very places that same day. Now, all I can do is remember. Memory is not the worst thing in the world, and the book actually has a lot to say about it. There's a sense in which memory is the main thing that allows us to believe in redemption: If we can think back to a time when life was better, we can imagine a time when it will be better again. Of course, time tends to warp memory so that it becomes nostalgia, which is less accurate, but not necessarily less powerful as a tool to believe in a day when all things will be made new. And that's ultimately the world that Helprin creates in Winter's Tale. It may not be as powerful for me as it once was, since I don't interact with the city on a daily basis. But it still speaks loud and clear.