James Salter

'One of the finest American writers of his mighty generation' - Esquire'A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliffhanger' - The New York TimesThe 1960s. Philip Dean, a footloose Yale dropout, is touring provincial France and sometimes Paris in a borrowed, once elegant car. He begins a mismatched affair with a young shop girl named Anne-Marie. Together they burn in an everyday but stunningly sensual paradise.A Sport and a Pastime is a seductive classic that established James Salter’s reputation as one of the finest writers of our time. It is remarkable for its eroticism, its luminous prose and its ability to explore the boundaries between what is dreamt and what is lived, between body and soul.Part of the Picador Collection

‘Enthralling’ - John Banville, author of The Sea‘Effortlessly beautiful, funny, sexy and wise’ - Julie Myerson, Books of the Year, ObserverAll That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change.The life is that of Philip Bowman and we see his formative experiences as a young naval officer in battles off Okinawa, his career as a book editor in New York after the Second World War, his trips to the great European cities – for publishing parties in London, romantic holidays in Paris.But despite his success, what eludes him is love. His first marriage goes bad, another fails to happen, finally he meets a woman who enthralls him before setting him on a course he could never imagine for himself.James Salter’s dazzling, seductive and haunting novel offers a fiercely intimate account of the great shocks and grand pleasures of being alive.‘Full of verve and wisdom’ - Julian Barnes, author of The Sense of Ending Part of the Picador Collection

With an introduction by Sarah HallThe 1960s. Philip Dean, a footloose Yale dropout, is touring provincial France and sometimes Paris in a borrowed, once elegant car. He begins a mismatched affair with a young shop girl named Anne-Marie. Together they burn in an everyday but stunningly sensual paradise. A Sport and A Pastime is a seductive classic that established James Salter's reputation as one of the finest writers of our time. It is remarkable for its eroticism, its luminous prose and its ability to explore the boundaries between what is dreamt and what is lived, between body and soul.

James Salter’s exalted place in American letters is based largely on the intense admiration of other writers, but his work resonates far beyond the realm of fellow craftsmen, addressing themes--youth, war, erotic love, marriage, life abroad, friendship--that speak to us all.Following the publication of his first novel, Salter left behind a military career of great promise to write full-time and--through decades of searching, exacting work--became one of American literature’s master stylists. Only months before he died, at the age of eighty-nine, he agreed to serve as the first Kapnick Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia, where he composed and delivered the three lectures presented in this book and introduced by his friend and fellow novelist, National Book Award-winning author John Casey.Salter speaks to us here with an easy intimacy, sharing his unceasing enchantment with the books that made up his reading life, including works by Balzac, Flaubert, Babel (whose prose is ""like a handful of radium""), Dreiser, Céline, Faulkner. These talks provide an invaluable opportunity to see the way in which a great writer reads. They also offer a candid look at the writing life--the rejection letters, not one but two negative reviews in the New York Times for the same book, writing in the morning or at night and worrying about money during the long afternoons.Salter raises the question, Why does one write? For wealth? For admiration, or a sense of ""importance""? Confronting a blank sheet that always offers too many choices, practicing a vocation that often demands one write instead of live, the answer for Salter was creating a style that captured experience, in a world where anything not written down fades away.Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Lectures

James Salter skrev «All that is» i 2013, i en alder av 87 år. Alt som er tar kraftfulle tak i det som former, driver, henfører, forvirrer og fortviler oss - og som gir oss de dypeste gleder, nemlig våre nære relasjoner. Vi møter Philip Bowman på broen på et krigsskip i japanske farvann mot slutten av andre verdenskrig, og følger ham gjennom de neste førti årene. Sett med Salters skarpe blikk skildres Bowmans livsreise, der vennskap, lidenskap og skuffelser passerer: «Han elsket henne ikke bare for det hun var, men hva hun kunne bli[». Hvem er han egentlig, denne Bowman? Liker vi ham eller liker vi ham ikke? Synes vi synd på ham eller er det til pass for ham når han snubler i sine valg eller ikke-valg...? Hva er det Salter egentlig ønsker å fortelle oss? At livet, når det kommer til stykket, ikke dreier seg om mer enn sex og god mat? Og litterære perler, som forleggeren Philip Bowman ville ha tilføyd?

James Salter skrev «All that is» i 2013, i en alder av 87 år. Alt som er tar kraftfulle tak i det som former, driver, henfører, forvirrer og fortviler oss - og som gir oss de dypeste gleder, nemlig våre nære relasjoner. Vi møter Philip Bowman på broen på et krigsskip i japanske farvann mot slutten av andre verdenskrig, og følger ham gjennom de neste førti årene. Sett med Salters skarpe blikk skildres Bowmans livsreise, der vennskap, lidenskap og skuffelser passerer: «Han elsket henne ikke bare for det hun var, men hva hun kunne bli[». Hvem er han egentlig, denne Bowman? Liker vi ham eller liker vi ham ikke? Synes vi synd på ham eller er det til pass for ham når han snubler i sine valg eller ikke-valg...? Hva er det Salter egentlig ønsker å fortelle oss? At livet, når det kommer til stykket, ikke dreier seg om mer enn sex og god mat? Og litterære perler, som forleggeren Philip Bowman ville ha tilføyd?

I det vakre huset ved Hudson-elven ikke langt fra New York City, bor Nedra og Viri med sine to barn, hund og ponni. De er paret som alle misunner. Middagsselskapene er intime og festlige, vennene er spennende og kunstneriske. Idyllen er komplett, så hvorfor taper det lysende livet mer og mer av stråleglansen? Det er et godt ekteskap, men samtidig et mindre godt ekteskap og plutselig er det intet ekteskap. Deretter følger vi Nedra og Viri hver for seg. James Salter er opptatt av nyansene i det indre, tette livet mennesker imellom. «Salter er - ordets dypeste forstand - en mesterlig forfatter» Arne Hugo Stølan, VG

Er du her ennå? er en fascinerende og urovekkende novellesamling. Det handler om flammende følelser som holdes tilbake, om fordømmelse, forulemping og bedrag. Salter har virkelig spisset blyanten og berører det store spørsmålet om hvorfor det ofte er slik at vi behandler de vi er aller mest glad i og avhengig av, på måter som i hvert fall leseren av disse novellene vil tenke nøye over - og kanskje bli streifet av en dose skam. «Livet er et følelsesmessig kaos og ingen portretterer dette kaoset bedre enn James Salter ... Det er vanskelig å velge seg en favorittnovelle i dette kaoset.» --The New York Times Book Review «Glitrende skrivekunst av en betydningsfull forfatter ... Alle novellene i denne samlingen byr på James Salters utsøkte prosa, talentet han har for elegante skift mellom hvem som betrakter og ytrer og hvordan han, med kun en liten detalj, er i stand til å karakterisere den det gjelder.» -- The Washington Post Book World

This is the brilliant memoir of a man who starts out in Manhattan and comes of age in the skies over Korea, before emerging as one of America's finest authors in the New York of the 1960s. Burning the Days showcases James Salter's uniquely beautiful style with some of the most evocative pages about flying ever written, together with portraits of the actors, directors and authors who later influenced him. It is an unforgettable book about passion, ambition and what it means to live and to write.

Last Night is a spellbinding collection of stories about passion - by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating. A lover of poetry is asked by his wife to give up what may be his most treasured friendship. A book dealer is forced to face the truth when a figure from his past pays an unexpected visit. In the title story, a husband has promised to assist his wife's suicide.Drawn in by a lingering swirl of tone, revelation and insight, the reader of these ten powerful stories will be transfixed as, seemingly without effort, Salter finds the charged moments that will come to shape a fate and detonates them before our very eyes.

All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change. The life is that of Philip Bowman and we see his formative experiences as a young naval officer in battles off Okinawa, his post-war career as a book editor in New York, his trips to the great European cities - for publishing parties in London, romantic holidays in Paris. But despite his success, what eludes him is love. His first marriage goes bad, another fails to happen, finally he meets a woman who enthrals him before setting him on a course he could never imagine for himself. James Salter's dazzling, seductive and haunting novel offers a fiercely intimate account of the great shocks and grand pleasures of being alive.

NATIONAL BESTSELLERA New York Times Book Review Notable BookAn NPR "Great Reads" Book All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change. Philip Bowman returns to America from the battlefields of Okinawa and finds success in the competetive world of publishing in postwar New York--yet what he most desires, and what eludes him, is love. Here is PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter's dazzling, sometimes devastating portrait of love and ambition, a fiercely intimate account of the great shocks and grand pleasures of being alive.

This collection offers two dozen essays and sketches about one of the passions of Salter's life, travel, a subject beloved by writers across the centuries. Over twenty years of skiing, hiking, climbing  from Colorado to Japan to the Tyrol, from Austria and Switzerland to Germany and France, Salter is an engaging companion sharing his great enthusiasm and adventures. James Salter's novels and volumes of memoir have been widely celebrated and he is now recognized as one of America's most important writers. Susan Sontag once remarked,  [Salter] is among the very few North American writers all of whose work I want to read, whose as yet unpublished books I wait for impatiently."

I det vakre huset ved Hudson-elven, ikke langt fra New York City, bor Nedra og Viri med sine to barn, hund og ponni. De er paret som alle misunner. Middagsselskapene er intime og festlige, vennene er spennende og kunstneriske. Idyllen er komplett, men lyset blekner litt etter litt . i takt med idealene som forvitrer, for hvert år som går. Det er et godt ekteskap, men samtidig et mindre godt ekteskap og plutselig er det intet ekteskap. Deretter følger vi Nedra og Viri, hver for seg. James Salter er opptatt av nyansene i det indre, tette livet mennesker imellom. Her retter han søkelyset mot det underliggende ingenting mellom to mennesker . og trenger seg inn under den forskjønnede overflaten via en strøm av både flyktige skisser og sylskarpe bilder, der den røde tråden er av og til vanskelig å få øye på. Susan Sontag hevdet at «Salter belønner spesielt dem som opplever lesing som en intens glede» og Richard Ford kaller ham bare «mesteren».

The lives of officers in an Air Force squadron in occupied Europe encompass the contradictions of military experience and the men's response to a young newcomer, bright and ambitious, whose fate is to be an emblem of their own. In Cassada, Salter captures the strange comradeship of loneliness, trust, and alienation among military men ready to sacrifice all in the name of duty and pride.After futile attempts at ordinary revision, Salter elected to begin with a blank page, to compose an entirely new novel based upon the characters and events of his second long unavailable novel, The Arm of Flesh. The result, Cassada, is a masterpiece.

Captain Cleve Connell has already made a name for himself among pilots when he arrives in Korea during the war there to fly the newly operational F-86 fighters against the Soviet MIGs. His goal, like that of every fighter pilot, is to chalk up enough kills to become an ace.But things do not turn out as expected. Mission after mission proves fruitless, and Connell finds his ability and his stomach for combat questioned by his fellow airmen: the brash wing commander, Imil; Captain Robey, an ace whose record is suspect; and finally, Lieutenant Pell, a cocky young pilot with an uncanny amount of skill and luck.Disappointment and fear gradually erode Connell's faith in himself, and his dream of making ace seems to slip out of reach. Then suddenly, one dramatic mission above the Yalu River reveals the depth of his courage and honor.Originally published in 1956, The Hunters was James Salter's first novel. Based on his own experiences as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, it is a classic of wartime fiction. Now revised by the author and back in print on the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Air Force, the story of Cleve Connell's war flies straight into the heart of men's rivalries and fears.

James Salter had written two novels, The Hunters and The Arm of Flesh, but it was his third, remarkable novel, A Sport and a Pastime, together with his film Three and a script he had written for Downhill Racer, that in 1969 elicited a letter of admiration from a writer and critic he did not know--Robert Phelps. The correspondence that resulted went on to span two decades. The letters themselves are exceptionally alive, uninhibited, gossipy, touching, and brilliant. The success of Salter and the struggles of Phelps are fully explored by the writers themselves in an honest exchange only letters can divulge. Along with an insightful foreword by Michael Dirda, this book gives voice to a nearly forgotten figure and his friendship with a man he admired.

First published nearly a quarter-century ago and one of the very few short-story collections to win the PEN/Faulkner Award, this is American fiction at its most vital--each narrative a masterpiece of sustained power and seemingly effortless literary grace. 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. These stories confirm James Salter as one of the finest writers of our time.