Paris in the Present Tense

by Mark Helprin

Jules was allergic to intellectuals, who he thought did not quite live in the world and were often incapable of appreciating it. He likened them to condemned men who would analyze their last meal rather than eat it. But as a Maître of the Paris-Sorbonne music faculty he was surrounded by intellectuals. Almost everyone he knew was one. They depended upon the label as if it were an iron lung, and by more or less continuously checking its motor and other parts they strained to demonstrate their intelligence at every opportunity and in almost everything they did, as if failing to do so would explode a bomb inside their chests. When he was young, Jules was relaxed about admitting that he had no desire to be, and was not, what everyone assumed he would want to be. It was a shock to one associate after another, who within a short time would become mysteriously unavailable, decline invitations to play tennis, or fail to return his calls. He understood that he had exiled himself and was no longer in the pack. It hurt, but he could not have done it any other way, and the music was enough. It flowed through him like a river flooding with snowmelt. It had only to be recognized, liberated, illumined, and it would fill the air like rain in the beam of an arc light. Just as the electrons of radio transmissions saturated the entire world, music was present in everything, but, unlike radio transmissions, it was elemental, present at the creation, and lasting without diminution even past th...