James Salter was een romanschrijver, korteverhalenschrijver en scenarioschrijver wiens krachtige, lyrische proza hem lof opleverde van critici en lezers. Zijn vroege carrière als piloot van de luchtmacht informeerde zijn schrijven met een uniek perspectief en precisie. Salter verkende de complexiteit van menselijke relaties, verlangen en de vergankelijkheid van het leven met scherpe intelligentie en diep inzicht. Zijn vermogen om momenten van schoonheid en pijn met zoveel elegantie vast te leggen, maakt hem tot een boeiende verteller.
Na de Tweede Wereldoorlog keert marinier Philip Bowman terug naar Amerika, waar hij al snel als redacteur aan de slag gaat. In die periode was de uitgeverswereld nog kleinschalig – een tijd van bijeenkomsten in chique appartementen en feestjes die steevast uit de hand liepen. Bowman dompelt zich onder in deze wereld van vluchtige intimiteiten en onverwachte veroveringen. Maar er is één verovering die hij vergeefs najaagt: die van de liefde. Eén huwelijk mislukt, een ander vindt nooit plaats en hij raakt in de ban van een vrouw die hem verraadt. Plotseling bevindt Bowman zich op een pad dat hij nooit verwacht had in te slaan. Alles wat is is geschreven in Salters kenmerkende poëtische stijl. Het is een meeslepend en verleidelijk liefdesverhaal over de passies en teleurstellingen die een man in zijn leven meemaakt.
In this brilliant book of recollection, one of America's finest writers re-creates people, places, and events spanning some fifty years, bringing to life an entire era through one man's sensibility. Scenes of love and desire, friendship, ambition, life in foreign cities and New York, are unforgettably rendered here in the unique style for which James Salter is widely admired. Burning the Days captures a singular life, beginning with a Manhattan boyhood and then, satisfying his father's wishes, graduation from West Point, followed by service in the Air Force as a pilot. In some of the most evocative pages ever written about flying, Salter describes the exhilaration and terror of combat as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, scenes that are balanced by haunting pages of love and a young man's passion for women. After resigning from the Air Force, Salter begins a second life, becoming a writer in the New York of the 1960s. Soon films beckon. There are vivid portraits of actors, directors, and producers—Polanski, Robert Redford, and others. Here also, more important, are writers who were influential, some by their character, like Irwin Shaw, others because of their taste and knowledge. Ultimately Burning the Days is an illumination of what it is to be a man, and what it means to become a writer. Only once in a long while—Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory or Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa —does a memoir of such extraordinary clarity and power appear. Unconventional in form, Burning the Days is a stunning achievement by the writer The Washington Post Book World said "inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and John Cheever"—a rare and unforgettable book.
From his first published story in the Paris Review in 1968, James Salter's stories have been universally acclaimed. Including his two published collections, Dusk and Other Stories (1988) and Last Night (2005), and the previously uncollected 'Charisma', this volume contains over twenty short stories by one of the finest writers of our time. Concerning men and women in their most intimate moments, struggling with loss, desire, or the burden of memory, each indelible narrative in the Collected Stories is marked by James Salter's great literary grace, his ability to show the subtleties of a character or situation with precision, and his equally assured ability to command reversals of fortune or shocking revelations.
This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair. Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness—and then felt compelled to destroy it.
4 hrs and 50 mins This short-story collection won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award for James Salter, author of Solo Faces and A Sport and A Pastime. Here, Salter's themes are memory and loss, the demands of honor and the inherent betrayals of sexual relations. Salter works like a miniaturist, evoking vast landscapes in a few lines: "Nothing is safe except for an hour," he writes in one beautiful story, opening up a whole world-view. Often, at the end of a story that runs only a few pages, the perspective suddenly broadens, the prose elevates to an abstract lyricism, and the reader is transported. Two New York attorneys newly flush with wealth embark on a dissolute tour of Italy; an ambitious young screenwriter unexpectedly discovers the true meaning of art and glory; a rider, far off in the fields, is involved in an horrific accident - night is falling, and she must face her destiny alone.
Viri and Nedra Berland live a gilded life with their two daughters in upstate New York. But as the years roll by, the cracks in their marriage become crevasses. It seems that in testing the very limits of their happiness, Nedra and Vira are compelled to destroy it.
Vernon Rand, a mountaineer, abruptly leaves his job and wife to climb in the Alps. He and his friend Cabot attempt to scale the North Face of the Dru, but disaster strikes when Cabot falls and is left paralyzed. Rand struggles to accept this and dedicates himself to healing his friend, both physically and mentally.
" Last Night is a collection of stories about passion - by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating." In ten stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments. A book dealer faces the truth about his life - as it is and never will be again - when he is visited unexpectedly by his brash former girlfriend. A lonely married woman, after a disturbing encounter with a drunken poet at a dinner party, finds herself irresistibly drawn to his animal surrogate, a huge tawny-eyed dog. A lover of poetry must come to terms with his wife's request to give up what may be his most treasured relationship. And in the title story, a translator, tormented by an agonizing sense of inevitability, assists in his wife's suicide even as he performs a last betrayal.
