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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

The KCRW Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm happy to have as my guest, Mark Helprin.

He's been on the show several times before.

His new book of short stories is The Pacific and other stories published by the Penguin Press. It's a new publisher,

actually, and his other books, of course, to begin at the beginning are A Dove of the East,

Refiners Fire, Ellis Island, Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, and memoir from Antproof

Case.

Now, I noticed certainly that the first couple of stories,

many of them, are about thematically second starts in life.

In the first story, which is Il Colore Retrovato,

a man who has discovered a great opera diva now is discovering a young woman

and decides that he will not be doing, be making the mistake of robbing someone an artist of a life in order to sell her into publicity.

And in the second story, the rebuilding of Paris and the rebuilding possibly of a marriage

occur concurrently.

And this theme of starting again, of Renaissance, occupies many of the stories.

Could you talk to me about that kind of understanding laid on regretfully that you've

done things wrong?

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