We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone..., 10 Jul 2007
Poetry in prose and technically brilliant. Never heard of James Salter before picking up this book. Perhaps because the American tradition is to prefer transparent plain text and books which are all plot and character (rather than beautiful writing - surely at least as important!), Salter just doesn't get that much press.

In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."

And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.

Highly recommended.


Poetry in prose, 20 Aug 1999
Not a traditionally told story, the plot is almost entirely incidental. What we are left with is the language, lyrical and beautiful, that can veer from a description of a family to spoons in a drawer, and make it seem like a logical extension of a house and its inhabitants.

Profoundly moving, 11 Jul 1999
I read this book while vacationing in Italy and attempting to cope with my divorce, a sudden and unexpected loss in my life. This book will knock you out. You'll never forget it.

Beautiful novel, 29 Jun 1999
A wonderfully-written, poignant portrait of a marriage. The end filled me with sadness and the chapters were consistently memorable. Salter is a miniaturist -- that is, he very effectively evokes isolated scenes with memorable details -- but he manages to convey time's passage as well. Salter has to be one of the top English stylists of the century. I marked the novel down one star only because I thought the fate of one of the central characters was not believable.

The Death of a Marriage Described in Lyrical Prose, 08 Apr 1999
This novel, set in the period between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s in New York, is the story of the marriage of well-off Viri and Nedra. The chapters are episodic, each one painting a picture of the marriage. Much of the plot (what there is of plot that is)seems to takes place at small intimate dinner parties. The prose is quite beautiful - thick and textured, lyrical and evocative. But it only keeps us distanced from these already remote characters. I felt like I was observing Viri and Nedra under water, or through a thick layer of fog. Why are Viri and Nedra having their respective affairs? Why is the marriage crumbling, while they remain polite and affable with each other? The author never answers these questions other than to suggest it is collapsing under the weight of their own ennui and vacuity.The tumultuous political and historical events of the Sixties never seem to touch the characters in the book. I must admit that the first half of the book left me cold. Viri and Nedra seem self-indulgent people, not worthy of the readers attention. What kept me with the story was the exquisite prose style that Salter has crafted. But more and more I was drawn into and touched by their very sad story even as I still felt distanced from them. Just to immerse oneself in Salter's beautiful writing style made this a worthwhile reading experience.

We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone..., 10 Jul 2007
Poetry in prose and technically brilliant. Never heard of James Salter before picking up this book. Perhaps because the American tradition is to prefer transparent plain text and books which are all plot and character (rather than beautiful writing - surely at least as important!), Salter just doesn't get that much press.

In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."

And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.

Highly recommended.


Poetry in prose, 20 Aug 1999
Not a traditionally told story, the plot is almost entirely incidental. What we are left with is the language, lyrical and beautiful, that can veer from a description of a family to spoons in a drawer, and make it seem like a logical extension of a house and its inhabitants.

Profoundly moving, 11 Jul 1999
I read this book while vacationing in Italy and attempting to cope with my divorce, a sudden and unexpected loss in my life. This book will knock you out. You'll never forget it.

Beautiful novel, 29 Jun 1999
A wonderfully-written, poignant portrait of a marriage. The end filled me with sadness and the chapters were consistently memorable. Salter is a miniaturist -- that is, he very effectively evokes isolated scenes with memorable details -- but he manages to convey time's passage as well. Salter has to be one of the top English stylists of the century. I marked the novel down one star only because I thought the fate of one of the central characters was not believable.

The Death of a Marriage Described in Lyrical Prose, 08 Apr 1999
This novel, set in the period between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s in New York, is the story of the marriage of well-off Viri and Nedra. The chapters are episodic, each one painting a picture of the marriage. Much of the plot (what there is of plot that is)seems to takes place at small intimate dinner parties. The prose is quite beautiful - thick and textured, lyrical and evocative. But it only keeps us distanced from these already remote characters. I felt like I was observing Viri and Nedra under water, or through a thick layer of fog. Why are Viri and Nedra having their respective affairs? Why is the marriage crumbling, while they remain polite and affable with each other? The author never answers these questions other than to suggest it is collapsing under the weight of their own ennui and vacuity.The tumultuous political and historical events of the Sixties never seem to touch the characters in the book. I must admit that the first half of the book left me cold. Viri and Nedra seem self-indulgent people, not worthy of the readers attention. What kept me with the story was the exquisite prose style that Salter has crafted. But more and more I was drawn into and touched by their very sad story even as I still felt distanced from them. Just to immerse oneself in Salter's beautiful writing style made this a worthwhile reading experience.

The best fictional work "on" mountaineering?, 29 May 1998
What makes SOLO FACES such a good read is, in part, 1) Salter's lean, understated, "honest" style, 2) his concern for all his characters, and 3) his ability to write about climbing intelligently without overdoing it. As far as I know, no novelist but Salter has pulled #3 off successfully. The novel is based (more or less) on the life of Gary Hemming (Rand in the book), who made a heroic rescue of two German climbers (Italians in the book) who were stranded on the daunting face of the Dru. Rand is a believable character: humble and shy, but confident and unable (or unwilling) to develop attachments to the various women that shuffle in and out of his life. I did not love the book's final chapter, which seems too obscure and unsatisfying. But maybe I just didn't get it. All in all, this is a very fine novel by one of our most underread writers.

Read the streamlined version in last week's newspaper...., 18 Jul 1997
Solo Faces is, like all other Salter works, almost adolescent in its insistence--on such well-worn trappings as romantic isolation, the heroic challenge of physical exertion, the honor of straight male comradship--and yet, despite the reliance on such usually hoary old saw-horse thematics, the book is compelling-- because felt: The mountain scenes seem achingly vivid, the fatigue, the exhilaration and ebb of yearning as abrupt and immediate as stone, ice and sunburn to the nervous-system. This is the most integral and "packed" of Salter's novels; perhaps a certain objective distance put the material into manageable perspective, even the dialogue seeming to mirror the "short-hand" of thought itself. What we get in a Salter novel is an idealized effigy or sculpture of an imagined arc of a single man's effort--perhaps throwing a discus, or reaching for a cloud--that could not be compromised with the horizontal medium of mere narrative, but required handfuls of glinting crystals, presented almost at random, without the necessity of chronology or verisimilitude, but true to our deeper, more "lovely" natures, as wild, half-tamed creatures, longing for the wind and the chase, the dare and the violation of harsh experience.

A quest for inner strength and satisfaction, 22 Mar 1997
The saga of a man who feels restrained by conventions and flat ground. Unable to find peace in the heights of his job as a roofer of churches he travels to southern France to assault the Alps. Climbing alone he negotiates the granite faces of the mountains until he takes on their majestic qualities himself. When a friend is trapped on the mountain, he makes a daring one man rescue during a storm that brings him the notice he has always shunned. But glory is fleeting and he returns to the anonymity he prefers having satisfied the only person of importance in his life, himself. This superbly written prose includes a description of being struck by lightning that is so vivid that you feel it. Salter is without question one of America's great writers and this is one of his best.

We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone..., 10 Jul 2007
Poetry in prose and technically brilliant. Never heard of James Salter before picking up this book. Perhaps because the American tradition is to prefer transparent plain text and books which are all plot and character (rather than beautiful writing - surely at least as important!), Salter just doesn't get that much press.

In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."

And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.

Highly recommended.


Poetry in prose, 20 Aug 1999
Not a traditionally told story, the plot is almost entirely incidental. What we are left with is the language, lyrical and beautiful, that can veer from a description of a family to spoons in a drawer, and make it seem like a logical extension of a house and its inhabitants.

Profoundly moving, 11 Jul 1999
I read this book while vacationing in Italy and attempting to cope with my divorce, a sudden and unexpected loss in my life. This book will knock you out. You'll never forget it.

Beautiful novel, 29 Jun 1999
A wonderfully-written, poignant portrait of a marriage. The end filled me with sadness and the chapters were consistently memorable. Salter is a miniaturist -- that is, he very effectively evokes isolated scenes with memorable details -- but he manages to convey time's passage as well. Salter has to be one of the top English stylists of the century. I marked the novel down one star only because I thought the fate of one of the central characters was not believable.

The Death of a Marriage Described in Lyrical Prose, 08 Apr 1999
This novel, set in the period between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s in New York, is the story of the marriage of well-off Viri and Nedra. The chapters are episodic, each one painting a picture of the marriage. Much of the plot (what there is of plot that is)seems to takes place at small intimate dinner parties. The prose is quite beautiful - thick and textured, lyrical and evocative. But it only keeps us distanced from these already remote characters. I felt like I was observing Viri and Nedra under water, or through a thick layer of fog. Why are Viri and Nedra having their respective affairs? Why is the marriage crumbling, while they remain polite and affable with each other? The author never answers these questions other than to suggest it is collapsing under the weight of their own ennui and vacuity.The tumultuous political and historical events of the Sixties never seem to touch the characters in the book. I must admit that the first half of the book left me cold. Viri and Nedra seem self-indulgent people, not worthy of the readers attention. What kept me with the story was the exquisite prose style that Salter has crafted. But more and more I was drawn into and touched by their very sad story even as I still felt distanced from them. Just to immerse oneself in Salter's beautiful writing style made this a worthwhile reading experience.

The best fictional work "on" mountaineering?, 29 May 1998
What makes SOLO FACES such a good read is, in part, 1) Salter's lean, understated, "honest" style, 2) his concern for all his characters, and 3) his ability to write about climbing intelligently without overdoing it. As far as I know, no novelist but Salter has pulled #3 off successfully. The novel is based (more or less) on the life of Gary Hemming (Rand in the book), who made a heroic rescue of two German climbers (Italians in the book) who were stranded on the daunting face of the Dru. Rand is a believable character: humble and shy, but confident and unable (or unwilling) to develop attachments to the various women that shuffle in and out of his life. I did not love the book's final chapter, which seems too obscure and unsatisfying. But maybe I just didn't get it. All in all, this is a very fine novel by one of our most underread writers.

Read the streamlined version in last week's newspaper...., 18 Jul 1997
Solo Faces is, like all other Salter works, almost adolescent in its insistence--on such well-worn trappings as romantic isolation, the heroic challenge of physical exertion, the honor of straight male comradship--and yet, despite the reliance on such usually hoary old saw-horse thematics, the book is compelling-- because felt: The mountain scenes seem achingly vivid, the fatigue, the exhilaration and ebb of yearning as abrupt and immediate as stone, ice and sunburn to the nervous-system. This is the most integral and "packed" of Salter's novels; perhaps a certain objective distance put the material into manageable perspective, even the dialogue seeming to mirror the "short-hand" of thought itself. What we get in a Salter novel is an idealized effigy or sculpture of an imagined arc of a single man's effort--perhaps throwing a discus, or reaching for a cloud--that could not be compromised with the horizontal medium of mere narrative, but required handfuls of glinting crystals, presented almost at random, without the necessity of chronology or verisimilitude, but true to our deeper, more "lovely" natures, as wild, half-tamed creatures, longing for the wind and the chase, the dare and the violation of harsh experience.

A quest for inner strength and satisfaction, 22 Mar 1997
The saga of a man who feels restrained by conventions and flat ground. Unable to find peace in the heights of his job as a roofer of churches he travels to southern France to assault the Alps. Climbing alone he negotiates the granite faces of the mountains until he takes on their majestic qualities himself. When a friend is trapped on the mountain, he makes a daring one man rescue during a storm that brings him the notice he has always shunned. But glory is fleeting and he returns to the anonymity he prefers having satisfied the only person of importance in his life, himself. This superbly written prose includes a description of being struck by lightning that is so vivid that you feel it. Salter is without question one of America's great writers and this is one of his best.

A Beautiful Novel, 23 Dec 2003
'A Sport and a Pastime' is the sad, tender story of the evolving relationship between a French girl and a young American visiting France. The tale is told in intimate, erotic detail by the American's friend (who is also living in France), and so the story takes on an unconventional quality, related to the reader at an extra remove. The reflective, restrained narrative voice drifts through the story of the affair, giving it a distinctive and compelling flavour; and although at times disconcerting, this thoughtful, voyeuristic perspective captures a strain of emotional intensity and complexity that would have been missed if the reader was not on the outside, covertly looking in.

Behind this relationship there is always a lingering sense of disaster approaching. Rarely is the narrator explicit about what is to come, but in a novel so concerned with life, experience, and the passing of time it is inevitable that the reader will encounter the flip-side. Salter concentrates on the shapes and the things, the words and gestures, while always making the reader conscious that something is being built to: the negative space, the silences and absences, surrounding the corporeality of the novel. This tension (a tension embodied in the choice of the title, a reference to a passage of the Koran), made real in the beautiful, resonant writing, is what makes 'A Sport and a Pastime' an essential read.

Narration of dreams; sex without titillation, 13 Jan 1998
This book is odd in several respects. It is narrated through the imagined or dreamed episodes of the narrator. The plot concerns an affair between a young Aerican and a French girl of 18. Although there is sex on almost every page, and there can hardly be any more ways of describing it, the scenes are narrated flatly and are set in dingy, rainy, grungy parts of France. The affair has nowhere to go, the participants being dependent on one another for their happiness. Without sex they have nothing to say to each other. More interesting is the device of the third person narration. We are given a description of the narrator, but he, too is flat and unemotional. One might conclude that he has dreamed the whole story up. Salter's writing is vivid and smooth, but his story is a one-note symphony. It's hard to empathize with any of the characters, which leaves the main thrust of the book in the bedroom. But it's better than average.

We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone..., 10 Jul 2007
Poetry in prose and technically brilliant. Never heard of James Salter before picking up this book. Perhaps because the American tradition is to prefer transparent plain text and books which are all plot and character (rather than beautiful writing - surely at least as important!), Salter just doesn't get that much press.

In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."

And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.

Highly recommended.


Poetry in prose, 20 Aug 1999
Not a traditionally told story, the plot is almost entirely incidental. What we are left with is the language, lyrical and beautiful, that can veer from a description of a family to spoons in a drawer, and make it seem like a logical extension of a house and its inhabitants.

Profoundly moving, 11 Jul 1999
I read this book while vacationing in Italy and attempting to cope with my divorce, a sudden and unexpected loss in my life. This book will knock you out. You'll never forget it.

Beautiful novel, 29 Jun 1999
A wonderfully-written, poignant portrait of a marriage. The end filled me with sadness and the chapters were consistently memorable. Salter is a miniaturist -- that is, he very effectively evokes isolated scenes with memorable details -- but he manages to convey time's passage as well. Salter has to be one of the top English stylists of the century. I marked the novel down one star only because I thought the fate of one of the central characters was not believable.

The Death of a Marriage Described in Lyrical Prose, 08 Apr 1999
This novel, set in the period between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s in New York, is the story of the marriage of well-off Viri and Nedra. The chapters are episodic, each one painting a picture of the marriage. Much of the plot (what there is of plot that is)seems to takes place at small intimate dinner parties. The prose is quite beautiful - thick and textured, lyrical and evocative. But it only keeps us distanced from these already remote characters. I felt like I was observing Viri and Nedra under water, or through a thick layer of fog. Why are Viri and Nedra having their respective affairs? Why is the marriage crumbling, while they remain polite and affable with each other? The author never answers these questions other than to suggest it is collapsing under the weight of their own ennui and vacuity.The tumultuous political and historical events of the Sixties never seem to touch the characters in the book. I must admit that the first half of the book left me cold. Viri and Nedra seem self-indulgent people, not worthy of the readers attention. What kept me with the story was the exquisite prose style that Salter has crafted. But more and more I was drawn into and touched by their very sad story even as I still felt distanced from them. Just to immerse oneself in Salter's beautiful writing style made this a worthwhile reading experience.

The best fictional work "on" mountaineering?, 29 May 1998
What makes SOLO FACES such a good read is, in part, 1) Salter's lean, understated, "honest" style, 2) his concern for all his characters, and 3) his ability to write about climbing intelligently without overdoing it. As far as I know, no novelist but Salter has pulled #3 off successfully. The novel is based (more or less) on the life of Gary Hemming (Rand in the book), who made a heroic rescue of two German climbers (Italians in the book) who were stranded on the daunting face of the Dru. Rand is a believable character: humble and shy, but confident and unable (or unwilling) to develop attachments to the various women that shuffle in and out of his life. I did not love the book's final chapter, which seems too obscure and unsatisfying. But maybe I just didn't get it. All in all, this is a very fine novel by one of our most underread writers.

Read the streamlined version in last week's newspaper...., 18 Jul 1997
Solo Faces is, like all other Salter works, almost adolescent in its insistence--on such well-worn trappings as romantic isolation, the heroic challenge of physical exertion, the honor of straight male comradship--and yet, despite the reliance on such usually hoary old saw-horse thematics, the book is compelling-- because felt: The mountain scenes seem achingly vivid, the fatigue, the exhilaration and ebb of yearning as abrupt and immediate as stone, ice and sunburn to the nervous-system. This is the most integral and "packed" of Salter's novels; perhaps a certain objective distance put the material into manageable perspective, even the dialogue seeming to mirror the "short-hand" of thought itself. What we get in a Salter novel is an idealized effigy or sculpture of an imagined arc of a single man's effort--perhaps throwing a discus, or reaching for a cloud--that could not be compromised with the horizontal medium of mere narrative, but required handfuls of glinting crystals, presented almost at random, without the necessity of chronology or verisimilitude, but true to our deeper, more "lovely" natures, as wild, half-tamed creatures, longing for the wind and the chase, the dare and the violation of harsh experience.

A quest for inner strength and satisfaction, 22 Mar 1997
The saga of a man who feels restrained by conventions and flat ground. Unable to find peace in the heights of his job as a roofer of churches he travels to southern France to assault the Alps. Climbing alone he negotiates the granite faces of the mountains until he takes on their majestic qualities himself. When a friend is trapped on the mountain, he makes a daring one man rescue during a storm that brings him the notice he has always shunned. But glory is fleeting and he returns to the anonymity he prefers having satisfied the only person of importance in his life, himself. This superbly written prose includes a description of being struck by lightning that is so vivid that you feel it. Salter is without question one of America's great writers and this is one of his best.

A Beautiful Novel, 23 Dec 2003
'A Sport and a Pastime' is the sad, tender story of the evolving relationship between a French girl and a young American visiting France. The tale is told in intimate, erotic detail by the American's friend (who is also living in France), and so the story takes on an unconventional quality, related to the reader at an extra remove. The reflective, restrained narrative voice drifts through the story of the affair, giving it a distinctive and compelling flavour; and although at times disconcerting, this thoughtful, voyeuristic perspective captures a strain of emotional intensity and complexity that would have been missed if the reader was not on the outside, covertly looking in.

Behind this relationship there is always a lingering sense of disaster approaching. Rarely is the narrator explicit about what is to come, but in a novel so concerned with life, experience, and the passing of time it is inevitable that the reader will encounter the flip-side. Salter concentrates on the shapes and the things, the words and gestures, while always making the reader conscious that something is being built to: the negative space, the silences and absences, surrounding the corporeality of the novel. This tension (a tension embodied in the choice of the title, a reference to a passage of the Koran), made real in the beautiful, resonant writing, is what makes 'A Sport and a Pastime' an essential read.

Narration of dreams; sex without titillation, 13 Jan 1998
This book is odd in several respects. It is narrated through the imagined or dreamed episodes of the narrator. The plot concerns an affair between a young Aerican and a French girl of 18. Although there is sex on almost every page, and there can hardly be any more ways of describing it, the scenes are narrated flatly and are set in dingy, rainy, grungy parts of France. The affair has nowhere to go, the participants being dependent on one another for their happiness. Without sex they have nothing to say to each other. More interesting is the device of the third person narration. We are given a description of the narrator, but he, too is flat and unemotional. One might conclude that he has dreamed the whole story up. Salter's writing is vivid and smooth, but his story is a one-note symphony. It's hard to empathize with any of the characters, which leaves the main thrust of the book in the bedroom. But it's better than average.

This is one great book, 20 Aug 2007
I've never seen it, but there was apparently a film made of this book in the late 50s, which by all accounts is Not Very Good - the usual Hollywood desire to "give it a happy ending" being the least of its sins.

Which is ironic, because if ever there was a book that could be filmed EXACTLY "AS IS", all dialogue word-for-word, this is it. It's short enough, it has enough action - dammit, it *reads* like watching a great film!

Which, on reflection means that perhaps it doesn't need a "sex-and-CGI"-heavy remake at all. Just read the book - you can do it in one sitting, and believe me, you'll want to - it is THAT great.

It's up there with John Hersey's "The War Lover" and Derek Robinson's "Piece Of Cake" among the best air war novels of all time.

Excellent.

Gripping, palm-sweating novel of war, 26 Feb 2007
If you've never read James Salter before and always liked the spare style of Hemingway but longed for an heir with a more modern sensibility Salter is the writer for you. This brilliant, page-turning book puts you in the cock-pit like no other. First published in 1956 and reissued this year alongside 4 other titles, you'll be hard pressed to read a better novel this year - unless you follow it up by reading his Light Years from the 70s. Discover James Salter and encounter a clarity of prose and emotional depth you'll be hard-pressed to match.

All time classic, 24 Aug 2006
James Salter flew fighters in the Korean Air War. He is the rarest of combinations: a gifted writer with an extraordinary primary experience to draw upon.

The Hunters is the beautifully written, hauntingly memorable story of Cleve Connell, who comes to Korea expecting to make a name for himself. Cleve is a good pilot, but is unlucky, and his lack of kills begins to wear him down. The story builds to a superb ending, wherein Cleve gets his chance to redeem himself, and does so in a totally unexpected way.

The Hunters is arguably the best novel about fliers and flying ever written.

A Classic, 05 Feb 2004
James Salter's first novel is the story of Cleve, a fighter pilot in the Korean War. When first encountered, there is an intentness about him, coupled with a distinctly fatalistic strain; he is in Korea to make "a valedictory befitting his years", using his flying skills to hunt MiGs. But this is not the reality. In subtle, achingly authentic prose, Salter depicts Cleve's feelings of frustration and helplessness as fellow flyers get kills while so many of his own missions end without incident. Few novels about war are so completely engrossing or well-written. 'The Hunters' is a classic.

Outstanding, 28 Aug 1999
One of the best books by one of the century's best writers (wish he were more prolific). Veterans (I am one, though not a pilot) will understand it better than others, but you don't need to be a vet to love this book. Subtle and well written. His Burning the Days is great too

We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone..., 10 Jul 2007
Poetry in prose and technically brilliant. Never heard of James Salter before picking up this book. Perhaps because the American tradition is to prefer transparent plain text and books which are all plot and character (rather than beautiful writing - surely at least as important!), Salter just doesn't get that much press.

In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."

And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.

Highly recommended.


Poetry in prose, 20 Aug 1999
Not a traditionally told story, the plot is almost entirely incidental. What we are left with is the language, lyrical and beautiful, that can veer from a description of a family to spoons in a drawer, and make it seem like a logical extension of a house and its inhabitants.

Profoundly moving, 11 Jul 1999
I read this book while vacationing in Italy and attempting to cope with my divorce, a sudden and unexpected loss in my life. This book will knock you out. You'll never forget it.

Beautiful novel, 29 Jun 1999
A wonderfully-written, poignant portrait of a marriage. The end filled me with sadness and the chapters were consistently memorable. Salter is a miniaturist -- that is, he very effectively evokes isolated scenes with memorable details -- but he manages to convey time's passage as well. Salter has to be one of the top English stylists of the century. I marked the novel down one star only because I thought the fate of one of the central characters was not believable.

The Death of a Marriage Described in Lyrical Prose, 08 Apr 1999
This novel, set in the period between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s in New York, is the story of the marriage of well-off Viri and Nedra. The chapters are episodic, each one painting a picture of the marriage. Much of the plot (what there is of plot that is)seems to takes place at small intimate dinner parties. The prose is quite beautiful - thick and textured, lyrical and evocative. But it only keeps us distanced from these already remote characters. I felt like I was observing Viri and Nedra under water, or through a thick layer of fog. Why are Viri and Nedra having their respective affairs? Why is the marriage crumbling, while they remain polite and affable with each other? The author never answers these questions other than to suggest it is collapsing under the weight of their own ennui and vacuity.The tumultuous political and historical events of the Sixties never seem to touch the characters in the book. I must admit that the first half of the book left me cold. Viri and Nedra seem self-indulgent people, not worthy of the readers attention. What kept me with the story was the exquisite prose style that Salter has crafted. But more and more I was drawn into and touched by their very sad story even as I still felt distanced from them. Just to immerse oneself in Salter's beautiful writing style made this a worthwhile reading experience.

The best fictional work "on" mountaineering?, 29 May 1998
What makes SOLO FACES such a good read is, in part, 1) Salter's lean, understated, "honest" style, 2) his concern for all his characters, and 3) his ability to write about climbing intelligently without overdoing it. As far as I know, no novelist but Salter has pulled #3 off successfully. The novel is based (more or less) on the life of Gary Hemming (Rand in the book), who made a heroic rescue of two German climbers (Italians in the book) who were stranded on the daunting face of the Dru. Rand is a believable character: humble and shy, but confident and unable (or unwilling) to develop attachments to the various women that shuffle in and out of his life. I did not love the book's final chapter, which seems too obscure and unsatisfying. But maybe I just didn't get it. All in all, this is a very fine novel by one of our most underread writers.

Read the streamlined version in last week's newspaper...., 18 Jul 1997
Solo Faces is, like all other Salter works, almost adolescent in its insistence--on such well-worn trappings as romantic isolation, the heroic challenge of physical exertion, the honor of straight male comradship--and yet, despite the reliance on such usually hoary old saw-horse thematics, the book is compelling-- because felt: The mountain scenes seem achingly vivid, the fatigue, the exhilaration and ebb of yearning as abrupt and immediate as stone, ice and sunburn to the nervous-system. This is the most integral and "packed" of Salter's novels; perhaps a certain objective distance put the material into manageable perspective, even the dialogue seeming to mirror the "short-hand" of thought itself. What we get in a Salter novel is an idealized effigy or sculpture of an imagined arc of a single man's effort--perhaps throwing a discus, or reaching for a cloud--that could not be compromised with the horizontal medium of mere narrative, but required handfuls of glinting crystals, presented almost at random, without the necessity of chronology or verisimilitude, but true to our deeper, more "lovely" natures, as wild, half-tamed creatures, longing for the wind and the chase, the dare and the violation of harsh experience.

A quest for inner strength and satisfaction, 22 Mar 1997
The saga of a man who feels restrained by conventions and flat ground. Unable to find peace in the heights of his job as a roofer of churches he travels to southern France to assault the Alps. Climbing alone he negotiates the granite faces of the mountains until he takes on their majestic qualities himself. When a friend is trapped on the mountain, he makes a daring one man rescue during a storm that brings him the notice he has always shunned. But glory is fleeting and he returns to the anonymity he prefers having satisfied the only person of importance in his life, himself. This superbly written prose includes a description of being struck by lightning that is so vivid that you feel it. Salter is without question one of America's great writers and this is one of his best.

A Beautiful Novel, 23 Dec 2003
'A Sport and a Pastime' is the sad, tender story of the evolving relationship between a French girl and a young American visiting France. The tale is told in intimate, erotic detail by the American's friend (who is also living in France), and so the story takes on an unconventional quality, related to the reader at an extra remove. The reflective, restrained narrative voice drifts through the story of the affair, giving it a distinctive and compelling flavour; and although at times disconcerting, this thoughtful, voyeuristic perspective captures a strain of emotional intensity and complexity that would have been missed if the reader was not on the outside, covertly looking in.

Behind this relationship there is always a lingering sense of disaster approaching. Rarely is the narrator explicit about what is to come, but in a novel so concerned with life, experience, and the passing of time it is inevitable that the reader will encounter the flip-side. Salter concentrates on the shapes and the things, the words and gestures, while always making the reader conscious that something is being built to: the negative space, the silences and absences, surrounding the corporeality of the novel. This tension (a tension embodied in the choice of the title, a reference to a passage of the Koran), made real in the beautiful, resonant writing, is what makes 'A Sport and a Pastime' an essential read.

Narration of dreams; sex without titillation, 13 Jan 1998
This book is odd in several respects. It is narrated through the imagined or dreamed episodes of the narrator. The plot concerns an affair between a young Aerican and a French girl of 18. Although there is sex on almost every page, and there can hardly be any more ways of describing it, the scenes are narrated flatly and are set in dingy, rainy, grungy parts of France. The affair has nowhere to go, the participants being dependent on one another for their happiness. Without sex they have nothing to say to each other. More interesting is the device of the third person narration. We are given a description of the narrator, but he, too is flat and unemotional. One might conclude that he has dreamed the whole story up. Salter's writing is vivid and smooth, but his story is a one-note symphony. It's hard to empathize with any of the characters, which leaves the main thrust of the book in the bedroom. But it's better than average.

This is one great book, 20 Aug 2007
I've never seen it, but there was apparently a film made of this book in the late 50s, which by all accounts is Not Very Good - the usual Hollywood desire to "give it a happy ending" being the least of its sins.

Which is ironic, because if ever there was a book that could be filmed EXACTLY "AS IS", all dialogue word-for-word, this is it. It's short enough, it has enough action - dammit, it *reads* like watching a great film!

Which, on reflection means that perhaps it doesn't need a "sex-and-CGI"-heavy remake at all. Just read the book - you can do it in one sitting, and believe me, you'll want to - it is THAT great.

It's up there with John Hersey's "The War Lover" and Derek Robinson's "Piece Of Cake" among the best air war novels of all time.

Excellent.

Gripping, palm-sweating novel of war, 26 Feb 2007
If you've never read James Salter before and always liked the spare style of Hemingway but longed for an heir with a more modern sensibility Salter is the writer for you. This brilliant, page-turning book puts you in the cock-pit like no other. First published in 1956 and reissued this year alongside 4 other titles, you'll be hard pressed to read a better novel this year - unless you follow it up by reading his Light Years from the 70s. Discover James Salter and encounter a clarity of prose and emotional depth you'll be hard-pressed to match.

All time classic, 24 Aug 2006
James Salter flew fighters in the Korean Air War. He is the rarest of combinations: a gifted writer with an extraordinary primary experience to draw upon.

The Hunters is the beautifully written, hauntingly memorable story of Cleve Connell, who comes to Korea expecting to make a name for himself. Cleve is a good pilot, but is unlucky, and his lack of kills begins to wear him down. The story builds to a superb ending, wherein Cleve gets his chance to redeem himself, and does so in a totally unexpected way.

The Hunters is arguably the best novel about fliers and flying ever written.

A Classic, 05 Feb 2004
James Salter's first novel is the story of Cleve, a fighter pilot in the Korean War. When first encountered, there is an intentness about him, coupled with a distinctly fatalistic strain; he is in Korea to make "a valedictory befitting his years", using his flying skills to hunt MiGs. But this is not the reality. In subtle, achingly authentic prose, Salter depicts Cleve's feelings of frustration and helplessness as fellow flyers get kills while so many of his own missions end without incident. Few novels about war are so completely engrossing or well-written. 'The Hunters' is a classic.

Outstanding, 28 Aug 1999
One of the best books by one of the century's best writers (wish he were more prolific). Veterans (I am one, though not a pilot) will understand it better than others, but you don't need to be a vet to love this book. Subtle and well written. His Burning the Days is great too

Difficult but very rewarding, 22 Oct 2007
A superbly original collection. I marvel at Salter's literary imagination and his economical, but lyrical prose. He is extremely sophisticated, nuanced and refined and his writing requires slow and careful reading. This collection is more accessible than his earlier collection entitled "Dusk" and also more satisfying. The title story is quite devastating.

Beautiful and moving and haunting, 12 Jun 2007
Perfect tales in perfect prose; like drops of molten metal, flashing and burning. 'My Lord You': a story that will stay with me forever. Please buy this collection.

A lesser work from a master of prose, 17 Apr 2006
James Salter is a quietly legendary figure in American literature, almost an insider secret for those whose stock in trade is the use of words. One has the impression that he is read and admired almost exclusively by other writers. This, his latest book, sees him returning to the form of short stories, his first collection published since the PEN/ Faulkner award winning Dusk and other stories in 1989. Salter has long been regarded a master of sparse, measured and bewilderingly beautiful prose. He can, as was once said, break your heart with a sentence. In interviews, Salter has spoken about the exactitude with which he writes - playing sentences over and over, measuring them against a rigorous internal standard. Yet it is always prose full of immediacy, the time spent choosing fitting words repays the effort not with a weightiness but instead with a clear lightness of touch.

Salter is not the most prolific of writers - having written for short of a half century he has produced only five novels, a collection of short stories and his autobiography (there have also been film scripts). The publication of a new work is something to be greeted with excitement, albeit a rather quiet excitement. It is a shame, then, that Last Night should disappoint.

The stories in Last Night feature characters that are almost exclusively upper middle class, white, East coast Americans. Salter is trying to tell us something about them, and about himself as a part of them. They are intelligent, well schooled, always cultured and knowing. Lives are polite, correct, appearances are important. The marriages portrayed are long standing but never happy - they are artefacts of convention, the romance in them long suffocated. There is the constant sense that lives could, or should, have been lived differently but never were. Each protagonist is a failure in his or her own light - they were never brave enough. Core to each story is impropriety, adultery. Each protagonist is either narratively engaged in adultery or guiltlessly holding onto memories of fleeting, illicit romances they once had. We are shown over and over again that it is only in those moments that the protagonists ever touch upon something transcendent, something bigger and infinitely more real than the constricting social constructions of their daily lives. This impropriety is shown to be a psychological crutch, grasped with both hands - the protagonists are never oblivious to the implications and the damage done, but are found instead to be passive to it.

The younger characters are almost ciphers. They are as skittish and fickle as they are tempting and engaged. It is hard to tell if this is how Salter genuinely perceives young people or if instead we are seeing them only through the prismic distortions of the older protagonist's need of them. They promise much but are always by the end of the story bored, moving on, leaving quietly broken protagonists in their wake.

Salter is a bleak writer, perhaps very truthful, or perhaps instead a writer willing a universality to his own predicament. Perhaps by creating characters that act and think like him, by creating a universal law stating that all men in middle age are unhappy and crave impropriety, he excuses or comforts himself. Either way, this is not new territory for Salter - all of his books mine similar seams. Yet here, as distinct from earlier books, there exists a sense of fatigue, of fatigue in the quality of prose. Salter at his poorest is still a match for any writer in the English language, however there are moments in his previous works that leave one breathless with wonder at his talent. In earlier books, most notably A Sport and a Pastime, and Light Years, there were perhaps two or three passages in each chapter that could stand out as some of the loveliest use of words or choice of metaphor in the English language. Here, the tone is inescapably Salter's and the cadence as precise as ever, but the writing seems to lack the rigour that we look to him for. Less energy has gone into this work. As a sculptor of prose the reader has the impression that Salter holds the chisel less assuredly in his old age.

Last night differs from Dusk and other stories, not just in that it is less well written, but also in that it is more explicit, more obvious. The stories in Dusk end ambiguously, strangely sometimes. The reader is left with a sense of having been somewhere, of having been privy to a mind that won't let up all of its secrets, its workings. The first story in Dusk, Am Strande von Tanger, ends: 'Her father has three secretaries. Hamburg is close to the sea.' The Cinema ends: 'His ecstasy was beyond knowing. The roofs of the great cathedrals shone in the winter air.'

Yet taking as an example, Last Night's My Lord You (probably the best and most poignant of the stories) which ends: 'probably he was forgotten, but not by her.' It may seem a petty difference and some may applaud the simplicity of such an ending but its resonance is limited by it. The sentiment of the piece is tied up, neatly packaged (she won't forget him), ultimately there is nothing to dwell on. Now, rather than let his protagonists' feelings become known to us through crafted observation, Salter just tells us. Other stories in the collection begin and end in a similar fashion. The prose, shorn of the use of metaphor for resonance, becomes rather more a collected statement of facts about people's lives. This is very much unlike Salter whose Light Years (his greatest work) he described as being like a still life - we the reader are to watch, not be directly privy to the lives portrayed. Last Night is filled with statements directly explaining protagonists' inner thoughts, and by doing this Salter betrays his lack of energy.

For those looking to be introduced to James Salter, look instead to A Sport and a Pastime or Light Years - they are better written, more potent with a love of words. For those that are fans already, by all means add the book to your collection, but place it on the shelf next to his lesser works like The Hunters, or Solo Faces. You might as well place it on a harder to reach shelf for it is unlikely you will reach for it as often as his greatest works - it is not a book that repays returning to time and again.

It is an extraordinary thing to criticise a very good book for not being mesmerising, yet Salter is held in my very highest esteem because of what he is capable of. In this collection there are only a few glimpses of his brilliance and the consequence is that a very bleak book finally has little to lighten it, to make it an unequivocally human endeavour.

As more and more reminiscences spill down the literary chute, it's clear that this trend is as strong as ever. The harvest has been a mixed one, of course. For every Frank McCourt or Mary Karr or Tobias Wolff, there seem to be a dozen score- settling memoirists, many of them less interested in understanding the past than sinking a hatchet into it. Now, however, another major contribution to the genre has appeared: James Salter's Burning the Days. This splendid autobiography had its inception in 1986, when the author wrote a trial-balloon recollection for Esquire, so he can hardly be accused of faddishness. But his book differs in another way from the current crop of memoirs, which often feature a forbidding gauntlet of familial or societal travails. Salter, contrarily, has led what many would consider a charmed life. Born an upper-middle-class "city child, pale, cared for, unaware", he attended West Point, served in the Korean War as a fighter pilot, and then seemingly ejected into a post-war period of undiluted glamour. To be sure, his early novels, such as The Hunters, failed to make Salter a household name. Still, he ran with literary lions like Irwin Shaw, drifted into the film business during the 1950s, and spent the next couple of decades jet-setting between New York, Paris, Rome and Aspen.

Salter puts the reader on notice from the very beginning that this will be a selective sort of recollection: "If you can think of life, for a moment, as a large house with a nursery, living and dining rooms, bedrooms, study, and so forth, all unfamiliar and bright, the chapters which follow are, in a way, like looking through the windows of this house.... At some windows you may wish to stay longer, but alas. As with any house, all within cannot be seen." What, then, are we privileged to see? Salter's airborne years account for perhaps a third of the book, and for this we should be grateful: no contemporary writer has made the experience more vivid or eerily palpable. There are brilliant evocations of New York, Rome and Paris, some of which rival the virtuosic scene-painting in the author's A Sport and a Pastime. More to the point, there are human beings, who tend to get semi-apotheosized by the sheer elegance of Salter's prose. ("I do not worship gods but I like to know they are there," he notes in his preface--although his portrait of, say, Irwin Shaw does seem to be propped up on a private altar.)

Salter's lofty romanticism can sometimes turn to gush. These blemishes are far outweighed, however, by the general splendour of the prose, which alternates Proustian extravagance with Hemingway-inspired economy. And even when the book flirts with frivolity, there is always the undertow of loss, of leave-taking. Many of the things that Salter describes are gone. In addition, he claims to have despoiled whatever remains by the very act of writing about it: "To write of someone thoroughly is to destroy them, use them up.... Things are captured and at the same time drained of life, never to shimmer or give back light again." No doubt his assertion has a grain of truth to it, at least for the author himself. But his loss is the reader's gain: most of what Salter has captured in Burning the Days remains alive and, frequently, luminous. --James Marcus

We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone..., 10 Jul 2007
Poetry in prose and technically brilliant. Never heard of James Salter before picking up this book. Perhaps because the American tradition is to prefer transparent plain text and books which are all plot and character (rather than beautiful writing - surely at least as important!), Salter just doesn't get that much press.

In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."

And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.

Highly recommended.


Poetry in prose, 20 Aug 1999
Not a traditionally told story, the plot is almost entirely incidental. What we are left with is the language, lyrical and beautiful, that can veer from a description of a family to spoons in a drawer, and make it seem like a logical extension of a house and its inhabitants.

Profoundly moving, 11 Jul 1999
I read this book while vacationing in Italy and attempting to cope with my divorce, a sudden and unexpected loss in my life. This book will knock you out. You'll never forget it.

Beautiful novel, 29 Jun 1999
A wonderfully-written, poignant portrait of a marriage. The end filled me with sadness and the chapters were consistently memorable. Salter is a miniaturist -- that is, he very effectively evokes isolated scenes with memorable details -- but he manages to convey time's passage as well. Salter has to be one of the top English stylists of the century. I marked the novel down one star only because I thought the fate of one of the central characters was not believable.

The Death of a Marriage Described in Lyrical Prose, 08 Apr 1999
This novel, set in the period between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s in New York, is the story of the marriage of well-off Viri and Nedra. The chapters are episodic, each one painting a picture of the marriage. Much of the plot (what there is of plot that is)seems to takes place at small intimate dinner parties. The prose is quite beautiful - thick and textured, lyrical and evocative. But it only keeps us distanced from these already remote characters. I felt like I was observing Viri and Nedra under water, or through a thick layer of fog. Why are Viri and Nedra having their respective affairs? Why is the marriage crumbling, while they remain polite and affable with each other? The author never answers these questions other than to suggest it is collapsing under the weight of their own ennui and vacuity.The tumultuous political and historical events of the Sixties never seem to touch the characters in the book. I must admit that the first half of the book left me cold. Viri and Nedra seem self-indulgent people, not worthy of the readers attention. What kept me with the story was the exquisite prose style that Salter has crafted. But more and more I was drawn into and touched by their very sad story even as I still felt distanced from them. Just to immerse oneself in Salter's beautiful writing style made this a worthwhile reading experience.

The best fictional work "on" mountaineering?, 29 May 1998
What makes SOLO FACES such a good read is, in part, 1) Salter's lean, understated, "honest" style, 2) his concern for all his characters, and 3) his ability to write about climbing intelligently without overdoing it. As far as I know, no novelist but Salter has pulled #3 off successfully. The novel is based (more or less) on the life of Gary Hemming (Rand in the book), who made a heroic rescue of two German climbers (Italians in the book) who were stranded on the daunting face of the Dru. Rand is a believable character: humble and shy, but confident and unable (or unwilling) to develop attachments to the various women that shuffle in and out of his life. I did not love the book's final chapter, which seems too obscure and unsatisfying. But maybe I just didn't get it. All in all, this is a very fine novel by one of our most underread writers.

Read the streamlined version in last week's newspaper...., 18 Jul 1997
Solo Faces is, like all other Salter works, almost adolescent in its insistence--on such well-worn trappings as romantic isolation, the heroic challenge of physical exertion, the honor of straight male comradship--and yet, despite the reliance on such usually hoary old saw-horse thematics, the book is compelling-- because felt: The mountain scenes seem achingly vivid, the fatigue, the exhilaration and ebb of yearning as abrupt and immediate as stone, ice and sunburn to the nervous-system. This is the most integral and "packed" of Salter's novels; perhaps a certain objective distance put the material into manageable perspective, even the dialogue seeming to mirror the "short-hand" of thought itself. What we get in a Salter novel is an idealized effigy or sculpture of an imagined arc of a single man's effort--perhaps throwing a discus, or reaching for a cloud--that could not be compromised with the horizontal medium of mere narrative, but required handfuls of glinting crystals, presented almost at random, without the necessity of chronology or verisimilitude, but true to our deeper, more "lovely" natures, as wild, half-tamed creatures, longing for the wind and the chase, the dare and the violation of harsh experience.

A quest for inner strength and satisfaction, 22 Mar 1997
The saga of a man who feels restrained by conventions and flat ground. Unable to find peace in the heights of his job as a roofer of churches he travels to southern France to assault the Alps. Climbing alone he negotiates the granite faces of the mountains until he takes on their majestic qualities himself. When a friend is trapped on the mountain, he makes a daring one man rescue during a storm that brings him the notice he has always shunned. But glory is fleeting and he returns to the anonymity he prefers having satisfied the only person of importance in his life, himself. This superbly written prose includes a description of being struck by lightning that is so vivid that you feel it. Salter is without question one of America's great writers and this is one of his best.

A Beautiful Novel, 23 Dec 2003
'A Sport and a Pastime' is the sad, tender story of the evolving relationship between a French girl and a young American visiting France. The tale is told in intimate, erotic detail by the American's friend (who is also living in France), and so the story takes on an unconventional quality, related to the reader at an extra remove. The reflective, restrained narrative voice drifts through the story of the affair, giving it a distinctive and compelling flavour; and although at times disconcerting, this thoughtful, voyeuristic perspective captures a strain of emotional intensity and complexity that would have been missed if the reader was not on the outside, covertly looking in.

Behind this relationship there is always a lingering sense of disaster approaching. Rarely is the narrator explicit about what is to come, but in a novel so concerned with life, experience, and the passing of time it is inevitable that the reader will encounter the flip-side. Salter concentrates on the shapes and the things, the words and gestures, while always making the reader conscious that something is being built to: the negative space, the silences and absences, surrounding the corporeality of the novel. This tension (a tension embodied in the choice of the title, a reference to a passage of the Koran), made real in the beautiful, resonant writing, is what makes 'A Sport and a Pastime' an essential read.

Narration of dreams; sex without titillation, 13 Jan 1998
This book is odd in several respects. It is narrated through the imagined or dreamed episodes of the narrator. The plot concerns an affair between a young Aerican and a French girl of 18. Although there is sex on almost every page, and there can hardly be any more ways of describing it, the scenes are narrated flatly and are set in dingy, rainy, grungy parts of France. The affair has nowhere to go, the participants being dependent on one another for their happiness. Without sex they have nothing to say to each other. More interesting is the device of the third person narration. We are given a description of the narrator, but he, too is flat and unemotional. One might conclude that he has dreamed the whole story up. Salter's writing is vivid and smooth, but his story is a one-note symphony. It's hard to empathize with any of the characters, which leaves the main thrust of the book in the bedroom. But it's better than average.

This is one great book, 20 Aug 2007
I've never seen it, but there was apparently a film made of this book in the late 50s, which by all accounts is Not Very Good - the usual Hollywood desire to "give it a happy ending" being the least of its sins.

Which is ironic, because if ever there was a book that could be filmed EXACTLY "AS IS", all dialogue word-for-word, this is it. It's short enough, it has enough action - dammit, it *reads* like watching a great film!

Which, on reflection means that perhaps it doesn't need a "sex-and-CGI"-heavy remake at all. Just read the book - you can do it in one sitting, and believe me, you'll want to - it is THAT great.

It's up there with John Hersey's "The War Lover" and Derek Robinson's "Piece Of Cake" among the best air war novels of all time.

Excellent.

Gripping, palm-sweating novel of war, 26 Feb 2007
If you've never read James Salter before and always liked the spare style of Hemingway but longed for an heir with a more modern sensibility Salter is the writer for you. This brilliant, page-turning book puts you in the cock-pit like no other. First published in 1956 and reissued this year alongside 4 other titles, you'll be hard pressed to read a better novel this year - unless you follow it up by reading his Light Years from the 70s. Discover James Salter and encounter a clarity of prose and emotional depth you'll be hard-pressed to match.

All time classic, 24 Aug 2006
James Salter flew fighters in the Korean Air War. He is the rarest of combinations: a gifted writer with an extraordinary primary experience to draw upon.

The Hunters is the beautifully written, hauntingly memorable story of Cleve Connell, who comes to Korea expecting to make a name for himself. Cleve is a good pilot, but is unlucky, and his lack of kills begins to wear him down. The story builds to a superb ending, wherein Cleve gets his chance to redeem himself, and does so in a totally unexpected way.

The Hunters is arguably the best novel about fliers and flying ever written.

A Classic, 05 Feb 2004
James Salter's first novel is the story of Cleve, a fighter pilot in the Korean War. When first encountered, there is an intentness about him, coupled with a distinctly fatalistic strain; he is in Korea to make "a valedictory befitting his years", using his flying skills to hunt MiGs. But this is not the reality. In subtle, achingly authentic prose, Salter depicts Cleve's feelings of frustration and helplessness as fellow flyers get kills while so many of his own missions end without incident. Few novels about war are so completely engrossing or well-written. 'The Hunters' is a classic.

Outstanding, 28 Aug 1999
One of the best books by one of the century's best writers (wish he were more prolific). Veterans (I am one, though not a pilot) will understand it better than others, but you don't need to be a vet to love this book. Subtle and well written. His Burning the Days is great too

Difficult but very rewarding, 22 Oct 2007
A superbly original collection. I marvel at Salter's literary imagination and his economical, but lyrical prose. He is extremely sophisticated, nuanced and refined and his writing requires slow and careful reading. This collection is more accessible than his earlier collection entitled "Dusk" and also more satisfying. The title story is quite devastating.

Beautiful and moving and haunting, 12 Jun 2007
Perfect tales in perfect prose; like drops of molten metal, flashing and burning. 'My Lord You': a story that will stay with me forever. Please buy this collection.

A lesser work from a master of prose, 17 Apr 2006
James Salter is a quietly legendary figure in American literature, almost an insider secret for those whose stock in trade is the use of words. One has the impression that he is read and admired almost exclusively by other writers. This, his latest book, sees him returning to the form of short stories, his first collection published since the PEN/ Faulkner award winning Dusk and other stories in 1989. Salter has long been regarded a master of sparse, measured and bewilderingly beautiful prose. He can, as was once said, break your heart with a sentence. In interviews, Salter has spoken about the exactitude with which he writes - playing sentences over and over, measuring them against a rigorous internal standard. Yet it is always prose full of immediacy, the time spent choosing fitting words repays the effort not with a weightiness but instead with a clear lightness of touch.

Salter is not the most prolific of writers - having written for short of a half century he has produced only five novels, a collection of short stories and his autobiography (there have also been film scripts). The publication of a new work is something to be greeted with excitement, albeit a rather quiet excitement. It is a shame, then, that Last Night should disappoint.

The stories in Last Night feature characters that are almost exclusively upper middle class, white, East coast Americans. Salter is trying to tell us something about them, and about himself as a part of them. They are intelligent, well schooled, always cultured and knowing. Lives are polite, correct, appearances are important. The marriages portrayed are long standing but never happy - they are artefacts of convention, the romance in them long suffocated. There is the constant sense that lives could, or should, have been lived differently but never were. Each protagonist is a failure in his or her own light - they were never brave enough. Core to each story is impropriety, adultery. Each protagonist is either narratively engaged in adultery or guiltlessly holding onto memories of fleeting, illicit romances they once had. We are shown over and over again that it is only in those moments that the protagonists ever touch upon something transcendent, something bigger and infinitely more real than the constricting social constructions of their daily lives. This impropriety is shown to be a psychological crutch, grasped with both hands - the protagonists are never oblivious to the implications and the damage done, but are found instead to be passive to it.

The younger characters are almost ciphers. They are as skittish and fickle as they are tempting and engaged. It is hard to tell if this is how Salter genuinely perceives young people or if instead we are seeing them only through the prismic distortions of the older protagonist's need of them. They promise much but are always by the end of the story bored, moving on, leaving quietly broken protagonists in their wake.

Salter is a bleak writer, perhaps very truthful, or perhaps instead a writer willing a universality to his own predicament. Perhaps by creating characters that act and think like him, by creating a universal law stating that all men in middle age are unhappy and crave impropriety, he excuses or comforts himself. Either way, this is not new territory for Salter - all of his books mine similar seams. Yet here, as distinct from earlier books, there exists a sense of fatigue, of fatigue in the quality of prose. Salter at his poorest is still a match for any writer in the English language, however there are moments in his previous works that leave one breathless with wonder at his talent. In earlier books, most notably A Sport and a Pastime, and Light Years, there were perhaps two or three passages in each chapter that could stand out as some of the loveliest use of words or choice of metaphor in the English language. Here, the tone is inescapably Salter's and the cadence as precise as ever, but the writing seems to lack the rigour that we look to him for. Less energy has gone into this work. As a sculptor of prose the reader has the impression that Salter holds the chisel less assuredly in his old age.

Last night differs from Dusk and other stories, not just in that it is less well written, but also in that it is more explicit, more obvious. The stories in Dusk end ambiguously, strangely sometimes. The reader is left with a sense of having been somewhere, of having been privy to a mind that won't let up all of its secrets, its workings. The first story in Dusk, Am Strande von Tanger, ends: 'Her father has three secretaries. Hamburg is close to the sea.' The Cinema ends: 'His ecstasy was beyond knowing. The roofs of the great cathedrals shone in the winter air.'

Yet taking as an example, Last Night's My Lord You (probably the best and most poignant of the stories) which ends: 'probably he was forgotten, but not by her.' It may seem a petty difference and some may applaud the simplicity of such an ending but its resonance is limited by it. The sentiment of the piece is tied up, neatly packaged (she won't forget him), ultimately there is nothing to dwell on. Now, rather than let his protagonists' feelings become known to us through crafted observation, Salter just tells us. Other stories in the collection begin and end in a similar fashion. The prose, shorn of the use of metaphor for resonance, becomes rather more a collected statement of facts about people's lives. This is very much unlike Salter whose Light Years (his greatest work) he described as being like a still life - we the reader are to watch, not be directly privy to the lives portrayed. Last Night is filled with statements directly explaining protagonists' inner thoughts, and by doing this Salter betrays his lack of energy.

For those looking to be introduced to James Salter, look instead to A Sport and a Pastime or Light Years - they are better written, more potent with a love of words. For those that are fans already, by all means add the book to your collection, but place it on the shelf next to his lesser works like The Hunters, or Solo Faces. You might as well place it on a harder to reach shelf for it is unlikely you will reach for it as often as his greatest works - it is not a book that repays returning to time and again.

It is an extraordinary thing to criticise a very good book for not being mesmerising, yet Salter is held in my very highest esteem because of what he is capable of. In this collection there are only a few glimpses of his brilliance and the consequence is that a very bleak book finally has little to lighten it, to make it an unequivocally human endeavour.


Dazzling..., 10 May 2007
I can think of no memoir quite like this: dazzling, perfect prose; a fascinating life recounted; emotionally honest. Questions asked about love, and longing, and loss; about life's purpose. Simply stunning.

We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone..., 10 Jul 2007
Poetry in prose and technically brilliant. Never heard of James Salter before picking up this book. Perhaps because the American tradition is to prefer transparent plain text and books which are all plot and character (rather than beautiful writing - surely at least as important!), Salter just doesn't get that much press.

In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."

And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.

Highly recommended.


Poetry in prose, 20 Aug 1999
Not a traditionally told story, the plot is almost entirely incidental. What we are left with is the language, lyrical and beautiful, that can veer from a description of a family to spoons in a drawer, and make it seem like a logical extension of a house and its inhabitants.

Profoundly moving, 11 Jul 1999
I read this book while vacationing in Italy and attempting to cope with my divorce, a sudden and unexpected loss in my life. This book will knock you out. You'll never forget it.

Beautiful novel, 29 Jun 1999
A wonderfully-written, poignant portrait of a marriage. The end filled me with sadness and the chapters were consistently memorable. Salter is a miniaturist -- that is, he very effectively evokes isolated scenes with memorable details -- but he manages to convey time's passage as well. Salter has to be one of the top English stylists of the century. I marked the novel down one star only because I thought the fate of one of the central characters was not believable.

The Death of a Marriage Described in Lyrical Prose, 08 Apr 1999
This novel, set in the period between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s in New York, is the story of the marriage of well-off Viri and Nedra. The chapters are episodic, each one painting a picture of the marriage. Much of the plot (what there is of plot that is)seems to takes place at small intimate dinner parties. The prose is quite beautiful - thick and textured, lyrical and evocative. But it only keeps us distanced from these already remote characters. I felt like I was observing Viri and Nedra under water, or through a thick layer of fog. Why are Viri and Nedra having their respective affairs? Why is the marriage crumbling, while they remain polite and affable with each other? The author never answers these questions other than to suggest it is collapsing under the weight of their own ennui and vacuity.The tumultuous political and historical events of the Sixties never seem to touch the characters in the book. I must admit that the first half of the book left me cold. Viri and Nedra seem self-indulgent people, not worthy of the readers attention. What kept me with the story was the exquisite prose style that Salter has crafted. But more and more I was drawn into and touched by their very sad story even as I still felt distanced from them. Just to immerse oneself in Salter's beautiful writing style made this a worthwhile reading experience.

The best fictional work "on" mountaineering?, 29 May 1998
What makes SOLO FACES such a good read is, in part, 1) Salter's lean, understated, "honest" style, 2) his concern for all his characters, and 3) his ability to write about climbing intelligently without overdoing it. As far as I know, no novelist but Salter has pulled #3 off successfully. The novel is based (more or less) on the life of Gary Hemming (Rand in the book), who made a heroic rescue of two German climbers (Italians in the book) who were stranded on the daunting face of the Dru. Rand is a believable character: humble and shy, but confident and unable (or unwilling) to develop attachments to the various women that shuffle in and out of his life. I did not love the book's final chapter, which seems too obscure and unsatisfying. But maybe I just didn't get it. All in all, this is a very fine novel by one of our most underread writers.

Read the streamlined version in last week's newspaper...., 18 Jul 1997
Solo Faces is, like all other Salter works, almost adolescent in its insistence--on such well-worn trappings as romantic isolation, the heroic challenge of physical exertion, the honor of straight male comradship--and yet, despite the reliance on such usually hoary old saw-horse thematics, the book is compelling-- because felt: The mountain scenes seem achingly vivid, the fatigue, the exhilaration and ebb of yearning as abrupt and immediate as stone, ice and sunburn to the nervous-system. This is the most integral and "packed" of Salter's novels; perhaps a certain objective distance put the material into manageable perspective, even the dialogue seeming to mirror the "short-hand" of thought itself. What we get in a Salter novel is an idealized effigy or sculpture of an imagined arc of a single man's effort--perhaps throwing a discus, or reaching for a cloud--that could not be compromised with the horizontal medium of mere narrative, but required handfuls of glinting crystals, presented almost at random, without the necessity of chronology or verisimilitude, but true to our deeper, more "lovely" natures, as wild, half-tamed creatures, longing for the wind and the chase, the dare and the violation of harsh experience.

A quest for inner strength and satisfaction, 22 Mar 1997
The saga of a man who feels restrained by conventions and flat ground. Unable to find peace in the heights of his job as a roofer of churches he travels to southern France to assault the Alps. Climbing alone he negotiates the granite faces of the mountains until he takes on their majestic qualities himself. When a friend is trapped on the mountain, he makes a daring one man rescue during a storm that brings him the notice he has always shunned. But glory is fleeting and he returns to the anonymity he prefers having satisfied the only person of importance in his life, himself. This superbly written prose includes a description of being struck by lightning that is so vivid that you feel it. Salter is without question one of America's great writers and this is one of his best.

A Beautiful Novel, 23 Dec 2003
'A Sport and a Pastime' is the sad, tender story of the evolving relationship between a French girl and a young American visiting France. The tale is told in intimate, erotic detail by the American's friend (who is also living in France), and so the story takes on an unconventional quality, related to the reader at an extra remove. The reflective, restrained narrative voice drifts through the story of the affair, giving it a distinctive and compelling flavour; and although at times disconcerting, this thoughtful, voyeuristic perspective captures a strain of emotional intensity and complexity that would have been missed if the reader was not on the outside, covertly looking in.

Behind this relationship there is always a lingering sense of disaster approaching. Rarely is the narrator explicit about what is to come, but in a novel so concerned with life, experience, and the passing of time it is inevitable that the reader will encounter the flip-side. Salter concentrates on the shapes and the things, the words and gestures, while always making the reader conscious that something is being built to: the negative space, the silences and absences, surrounding the corporeality of the novel. This tension (a tension embodied in the choice of the title, a reference to a passage of the Koran), made real in the beautiful, resonant writing, is what makes 'A Sport and a Pastime' an essential read.

Narration of dreams; sex without titillation, 13 Jan 1998
This book is odd in several respects. It is narrated through the imagined or dreamed episodes of the narrator. The plot concerns an affair between a young Aerican and a French girl of 18. Although there is sex on almost every page, and there can hardly be any more ways of describing it, the scenes are narrated flatly and are set in dingy, rainy, grungy parts of France. The affair has nowhere to go, the participants being dependent on one another for their happiness. Without sex they have nothing to say to each other. More interesting is the device of the third person narration. We are given a description of the narrator, but he, too is flat and unemotional. One might conclude that he has dreamed the whole story up. Salter's writing is vivid and smooth, but his story is a one-note symphony. It's hard to empathize with any of the characters, which leaves the main thrust of the book in the bedroom. But it's better than average.

This is one great book, 20 Aug 2007
I've never seen it, but there was apparently a film made of this book in the late 50s, which by all accounts is Not Very Good - the usual Hollywood desire to "give it a happy ending" being the least of its sins.

Which is ironic, because if ever there was a book that could be filmed EXACTLY "AS IS", all dialogue word-for-word, this is it. It's short enough, it has enough action - dammit, it *reads* like watching a great film!

Which, on reflection means that perhaps it doesn't need a "sex-and-CGI"-heavy remake at all. Just read the book - you can do it in one sitting, and believe me, you'll want to - it is THAT great.

It's up there with John Hersey's "The War Lover" and Derek Robinson's "Piece Of Cake" among the best air war novels of all time.

Excellent.

Gripping, palm-sweating novel of war, 26 Feb 2007
If you've never read James Salter before and always liked the spare style of Hemingway but longed for an heir with a more modern sensibility Salter is the writer for you. This brilliant, page-turning book puts you in the cock-pit like no other. First published in 1956 and reissued this year alongside 4 other titles, you'll be hard pressed to read a better novel this year - unless you follow it up by reading his Light Years from the 70s. Discover James Salter and encounter a clarity of prose and emotional depth you'll be hard-pressed to match.

All time classic, 24 Aug 2006
James Salter flew fighters in the Korean Air War. He is the rarest of combinations: a gifted writer with an extraordinary primary experience to draw upon.

The Hunters is the beautifully written, hauntingly memorable story of Cleve Connell, who comes to Korea expecting to make a name for himself. Cleve is a good pilot, but is unlucky, and his lack of kills begins to wear him down. The story builds to a superb ending, wherein Cleve gets his chance to redeem himself, and does so in a totally unexpected way.

The Hunters is arguably the best novel about fliers and flying ever written.

A Classic, 05 Feb 2004
James Salter's first novel is the story of Cleve, a fighter pilot in the Korean War. When first encountered, there is an intentness about him, coupled with a distinctly fatalistic strain; he is in Korea to make "a valedictory befitting his years", using his flying skills to hunt MiGs. But this is not the reality. In subtle, achingly authentic prose, Salter depicts Cleve's feelings of frustration and helplessness as fellow flyers get kills while so many of his own missions end without incident. Few novels about war are so completely engrossing or well-written. 'The Hunters' is a classic.

Outstanding, 28 Aug 1999
One of the best books by one of the century's best writers (wish he were more prolific). Veterans (I am one, though not a pilot) will understand it better than others, but you don't need to be a vet to love this book. Subtle and well written. His Burning the Days is great too

Difficult but very rewarding, 22 Oct 2007
A superbly original collection. I marvel at Salter's literary imagination and his economical, but lyrical prose. He is extremely sophisticated, nuanced and refined and his writing requires slow and careful reading. This collection is more accessible than his earlier collection entitled "Dusk" and also more satisfying. The title story is quite devastating.

Beautiful and moving and haunting, 12 Jun 2007
Perfect tales in perfect prose; like drops of molten metal, flashing and burning. 'My Lord You': a story that will stay with me forever. Please buy this collection.

A lesser work from a master of prose, 17 Apr 2006
James Salter is a quietly legendary figure in American literature, almost an insider secret for those whose stock in trade is the use of words. One has the impression that he is read and admired almost exclusively by other writers. This, his latest book, sees him returning to the form of short stories, his first collection published since the PEN/ Faulkner award winning Dusk and other stories in 1989. Salter has long been regarded a master of sparse, measured and bewilderingly beautiful prose. He can, as was once said, break your heart with a sentence. In interviews, Salter has spoken about the exactitude with which he writes - playing sentences over and over, measuring them against a rigorous internal standard. Yet it is always prose full of immediacy, the time spent choosing fitting words repays the effort not with a weightiness but instead with a clear lightness of touch.

Salter is not the most prolific of writers - having written for short of a half century he has produced only five novels, a collection of short stories and his autobiography (there have also been film scripts). The publication of a new work is something to be greeted with excitement, albeit a rather quiet excitement. It is a shame, then, that Last Night should disappoint.

The stories in Last Night feature characters that are almost exclusively upper middle class, white, East coast Americans. Salter is trying to tell us something about them, and about himself as a part of them. They are intelligent, well schooled, always cultured and knowing. Lives are polite, correct, appearances are important. The marriages portrayed are long standing but never happy - they are artefacts of convention, the romance in them long suffocated. There is the constant sense that lives could, or should, have been lived differently but never were. Each protagonist is a failure in his or her own light - they were never brave enough. Core to each story is impropriety, adultery. Each protagonist is either narratively engaged in adultery or guiltlessly holding onto memories of fleeting, illicit romances they once had. We are shown over and over again that it is only in those moments that the protagonists ever touch upon something transcendent, something bigger and infinitely more real than the constricting social constructions of their daily lives. This impropriety is shown to be a psychological crutch, grasped with both hands - the protagonists are never oblivious to the implications and the damage done, but are found instead to be passive to it.

The younger characters are almost ciphers. They are as skittish and fickle as they are tempting and engaged. It is hard to tell if this is how Salter genuinely perceives young people or if instead we are seeing them only through the prismic distortions of the older protagonist's need of them. They promise much but are always by the end of the story bored, moving on, leaving quietly broken protagonists in their wake.

Salter is a bleak writer, perhaps very truthful, or perhaps instead a writer willing a universality to his own predicament. Perhaps by creating characters that act and think like him, by creating a universal law stating that all men in middle age are unhappy and crave impropriety, he excuses or comforts himself. Either way, this is not new territory for Salter - all of his books mine similar seams. Yet here, as distinct from earlier books, there exists a sense of fatigue, of fatigue in the quality of prose. Salter at his poorest is still a match for any writer in the English language, however there are moments in his previous works that leave one breathless with wonder at his talent. In earlier books, most notably A Sport and a Pastime, and Light Years, there were perhaps two or three passages in each chapter that could stand out as some of the loveliest use of words or choice of metaphor in the English language. Here, the tone is inescapably Salter's and the cadence as precise as ever, but the writing seems to lack the rigour that we look to him for. Less energy has gone into this work. As a sculptor of prose the reader has the impression that Salter holds the chisel less assuredly in his old age.

Last night differs from Dusk and other stories, not just in that it is less well written, but also in that it is more explicit, more obvious. The stories in Dusk end ambiguously, strangely sometimes. The reader is left with a sense of having been somewhere, of having been privy to a mind that won't let up all of its secrets, its workings. The first story in Dusk, Am Strande von Tanger, ends: 'Her father has three secretaries. Hamburg is close to the sea.' The Cinema ends: 'His ecstasy was beyond knowing. The roofs of the great cathedrals shone in the winter air.'

Yet taking as an example, Last Night's My Lord You (probably the best and most poignant of the stories) which ends: 'probably he was forgotten, but not by her.' It may seem a petty difference and some may applaud the simplicity of such an ending but its resonance is limited by it. The sentiment of the piece is tied up, neatly packaged (she won't forget him), ultimately there is nothing to dwell on. Now, rather than let his protagonists' feelings become known to us through crafted observation, Salter just tells us. Other stories in the collection begin and end in a similar fashion. The prose, shorn of the use of metaphor for resonance, becomes rather more a collected statement of facts about people's lives. This is very much unlike Salter whose Light Years (his greatest work) he described as being like a still life - we the reader are to watch, not be directly privy to the lives portrayed. Last Night is filled with statements directly explaining protagonists' inner thoughts, and by doing this Salter betrays his lack of energy.

For those looking to be introduced to James Salter, look instead to A Sport and a Pastime or Light Years - they are better written, more potent with a love of words. For those that are fans already, by all means add the book to your collection, but place it on the shelf next to his lesser works like The Hunters, or Solo Faces. You might as well place it on a harder to reach shelf for it is unlikely you will reach for it as often as his greatest works - it is not a book that repays returning to time and again.

It is an extraordinary thing to criticise a very good book for not being mesmerising, yet Salter is held in my very highest esteem because of what he is capable of. In this collection there are only a few glimpses of his brilliance and the consequence is that a very bleak book finally has little to lighten it, to make it an unequivocally human endeavour.