Winter in New York, 1900

S

till pouring my way through Winter’s Tale, which is everything everyone said it was. It’s blowing me away and I can’t really talk about it yet. All I can say is: WOW. More thoughts to come – it’s really stirring me up. “The deeps have been sounded”. Came across this picture this morning, of a snowy day in Central Park in 1900, and it made me think of Winter’s Tale, but it’s one of those books that is so all-encompassing that everything is now making me think of Winter’s Tale. The photo below is such a pretty scene of a world gone by, but still there, still able to be glimpsed, especially (and this is Helprin’s genius) in winter. I remember when they had that huge snowstorm a couple years ago, maybe 8 or 9 years ago?, and seeing people cross-country skiing through a completely snowed-over Times Square. The landscape had transformed. Gone back in time, even. Winter as a leveler, of course, which it can be, but also as something that helps us transcend, and get glimpses of other times.

Helprin writes:

Even in September, cold winds arrived from Canada and shut people in by their fires, making them think of the city of old. Winter, it was said, was the season in which time was superconductive – the season when a brittle world might shatter in the face of astonishing events, later to reform in a new body as solid and smooth as young transparent ice.