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The theme of an older man’s infatuation with a youth appears throughout literature. For example, Sir Thomas Wyatt’s “They Flee from Me,” Cohen and Melissa in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and Gustav von Aschenbach in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, to name just a few. How is Jules similar to his predecessors in this regard, as a man close to death who grasps at the incarnation of youth and life, and how does he differ?
the modern anti-hero,
In an interview with Open Letters Monthly, Helprin calls Paris in the Present Tense a novel about, among other themes, “dying well.” He says, “knowing how to die well makes it possible to live well.” What does it mean to you to “die well”? Does Jules “die well”?
The author has stated that the more work you put into a book, the more you get out of it. He has also stated that one of his goals is to draw in, entrance, and transport the reader to the point where, like a dream, at times the book seems more real than reality.
Would Paris in the Present Tense make a movie you might like to see—visually, emotionally, musically, and in terms of action, suspense, and even humor?
