James Salter's "A Sport and a Pastime"

Egg Shen — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 19:04:33 -0800

James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime is one of those very rare novels that seems not so much to have been written as discovered. At its heart is a love story, an encounter, that transforms its relatively ordinary protagonists into beings around whom the entire cosmos shapes itself. The love story is delicate and ephemeral, put together out of bits and pieces, like a bird's nest. The vulnerable lovers tremble, in the most mundane circumstances, on the edge of catastrophe. Simply the way one of them moves across the room to meet the other seems miraculous and hazardous. Were they to become aware of themselves everything would be lost. But there is no danger of that. Oblivious, they tiptoe on a precipice. They do not and cannot know that their innocence cloaks them in a kind of divinity and infallibility. Actions and attitudes we expect to bring them down don't. They do things that seem so perfect, so poignant, without knowing they are doing anything at all. They arc beautifully across our path, and then vanish. - Michael Doliner (previously) "Somewhere," James Salter once wrote, "the ancient clerks, amid stacks of faint interest to them, are sorting literary reputations. The work goes on endlessly and without haste. There are names passed over and names revered, names of heroes and of those long thought to be, names of every sort and level of importance." Salter was writing about his friend Irwin Shaw, whose name, once renowned, has slipped quietly from the first rank. Where will the tireless, indifferent clerks file the name James Salter? His readers, few in number but adamant in their conviction that he is a great writer, are confident that the author of "A Sport and a Pastime" and "Dusk: And Other Stories," the collection that won him the 1988 PEN/Faulkner Award (perhaps this country's most prestigious literary prize), will eventually take his place in the canon of American literature. - The New York Times

James Salter Month at The Paris Review

hydatius — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 03:58:32 -0800

James Salter Month at The Paris Review. A series of articles throughout April celebrating the life and work of one of the best at his craft there is. A great writer indeed.

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James Salter's "A Sport and a Pastime"

James Salter Month at The Paris Review