James Salter
Tomorrow night, Narrative is holding a fundraiser in San Francisco. If you haven’t read Narrative online, you really must. Anne Beattie and a younger, emerging writer, Anthony Marra, will be two of the attractions. But James Salter will also be there. If you haven’t read James Salter, stop right now. Click here and read “Last Night.”
Aren’t you glad you did? Wasn’t that a thunder clap of a story? I feel about Salter the way 10-year-olds once felt about Mickey Mantle.
He writes terrific short stories. But I prefer his novels, which as novels are not perfect but contain magic. By which I mean that James Salter, drawing on the same vocabulary available to the rest of us, somehow manages to select and configure words so that each particular one feels as if it’s finally found its proper place. Give him the pages of a novel to work with, to fill with physical detail, with charged moments, and he’ll awe you. Read the description of a train ride out of Paris that opens A Sport and a Pastime: You’ll see.
That said, it turns out that my most cherished work of his is not a novel, but a memoir. He calls it Burning the Days: Recollection. And yes, it is clearly selective, a picking and choosing among the stuff of a single life, his own—West Point, indelible friends, the flying, officers’ wives, the hotels in Paris and Rome and New York, movie people, the nights—remade through his particular gift into something magnified, fully lived.
As it happens, I first read Burning the Days in Paris, and later I took it to Rome and reread it there, and I’ve reread it three other times. Are you beginning to get the picture?
Salter in earlier times.
Salter charmed us all. He read a story of his. He’s an old guy, but he’s holding up just fine. Sparking blue eyes. He was a fighter pilot in Korea, the dashing officer, then years on the Continent in the company of writers, filmmakers, elegant women—always somehow living well. More than well. It shows in his demeanor, the worldliness. None of which would matter that much to me if he could not write the way he does.
Question time came: my opportunity. I said, “What if you looked at Burning the Days like a novel, with this Salter fellow as the protagonist? Would you say as the author that you ‘got’ him, that you nailed him?”
He gave a startled smile. He said he hadn’t thought about it. But he liked the question and gave me a considered response. “All in all, I think I came close.”
He remembered me a little while later when I went up to have him sign a book. He asked, “Are you a writer?”
And I…well, I am a grown man. But it was just like—and I mean just like—I was 10 years old and Mickey Mantle was autographing my glove and asking, “You play ball, kid?”
And all I can think of to say right now is, ”Nothing like I wish. But I could watch you play all day.”
Here’s an interview about Burning the Days that Salter did in 1997 with Charlie Rose.
Ted the Cat (1994-present) is a domestic shorthair blogger and vers libre poet. He also enjoys sleeping, eating, and lurking. Ted the Cat co-habits with Kaze,
also a blogger at 317am.net.
Yes, Kaze, I'm glad I did. Yes, Kaze, a thunderclap of a story.
Thank you, Kaze, for the link to Narrative. Wish I'd dare submit something. Who knows. Maybe in the future, when I've gone senile and daring.
Mind if I skip your Mickey Mantle for my Margot Fonteyn?
I'm so glad, Deborah, that you read the story. Passing it along is the next best (though perhaps a distant next-best) thing to writing it. And yes, Dame Margot's fine with me. I used to spend more money than I could afford to see Barishnikov.
Just reread A Sport and a Pastime. Good G-d, the man is a musician with words.
By the by, I think seeing Barishnikov is worth every last penny you have. Same went for Dame Margot.
You reread it! Good for you, young lady! It almost didn't get into print at all–took George Plimpton, believe it or not, to save it. I have a little trouble figuring out who's narrating after a while, but I do love it so. If I had anything to do with your revisiting Salter's writing, then the post was well worth doing.
Wish I could fly across the coast for this. One of my prose idols for sure
Ape – I just ran into your comment on Ward Six. I agree with you. http://wardsix.blogspot.com/2010/06/ward-six-list-of-ten-over-80.html
You write: "I feel about Salter the way 10-year-olds once felt about Mickey Mantle."
Me too!!! And I'm a girl:-)
Salter is the best there is.
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This line from “Burning the Days” stopped me dead in my tracks.. JS on the death of a friend in WWII:
“His death was one of many and sped away quickly, like an oar swirl.”
What imagery..
Pip, while in Rome I decided to reread “A Sport and a Pasttime.” I’d like to know what you thought of it.
I’m afraid to say I’m still grinding my way through it.. I’m re-reading “Burning the Days” at the same time – which is hardly fair. I read somewhere that JS prepares his writing meticulously, supported by note books, diaries, journals and jottings & fragments of people & places recorded on scraps of paper. I get the impression that in “A Sport and a Pastime” he tried to assemble all his notes into a book, but without much in the way of a story line to pull it all together.
I think he is without equal in his ability to capture a scene, a moment, using the minimum of words but, to me, the story comes off second best to the quality of his descriptive powers. I have to say I still haven’t finished it whereas I raced through “Burning the Days” in a couple of days.
Pip, I think you make some really good points. “A Sport and a Pasttime” is just a dream, and, to be kind, let’s just say it has its own logic. It doesn’t have a plot as such. More of a problem, I think, is that the narrator keeps telling us that he’s making things up, that none of this is real, but somehow assumes that we’ll stay invested anyway. Impossible to do. I admire the book for the reasons you point out, but I’m not fond of that particular conceit. And there’s no reason to care about Dean, either, except that the narrator keeps telling us how special he is. We need more proof of that. These issues notwithstanding–what style. The prose!
I couldn’t argue with a word of that, Kaze. I live in SW France amid the last vestiges of the old Europe JS wrote about so poignantly. I’m searching for that story too.