Literary Style and Influence
Although many have stated that the novel has a similar feel to the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Salman Rushdie, and the book is in part a paean to New York City in the same way that Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is a tribute to Garcia Marquez's Colombia, Helprin himself is on record (in a letter to Keith Morgan, and elsewhere) as stating that he "detests" magical realism, because "it is exhibitionistic, forced, self-conscious, and almost devoid of emotional content. Perhaps I don't like it for the same reasons that I have never taken recreational or hallucinogenic drugs. I don't believe that a story must necessarily follow the conventions of 19th-century realism, but if it departs into the realms of unreality it must be pulled there by deep conviction and the sense of the story itself, not driven there as in a mechanical literary experiment. No one ever said the Bible was 'magical realism' even though what happens in it departs from the realm of physics. Put me down as leaning in that direction rather than toward South America." A more explicit influence may be Fielding's Tom Jones and Dante's Divine Comedy.
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