Mark Helprin

For a long time, it didn’t make sense to us that writers like Mark Helprin and Orson Scott Card, spinners of such epic and delightful fantasy worlds, were also conservatives. The mirth, recklessness, and sheer imagination that fuels their fiction just doesn’t jibe with their imperious political commentaries, or with the speeches Helprin has written for rigid Republican politicos like Bob Dole. Ah, but time has revealed that fantasy and myth do indeed have a place in the realm of a successful political machine. Curiously, Helprin’s new novel features an uncommonly stupid presidential candidate. And who knows exactly what commentary he’s trying to make by dropping a couple of British royals—by parachute, bare naked—onto American soil, after which they embark on a bizarre and outlandish cross-country quest? It’s all greatly amusing, and we’ll leave it at that.