James Salter's Strange Career

On September 7,1997, when Salter had been writing for forty years, Samuel Hynes observed in the New York Times Book Review that "his reputation is of a curious kind; no single book of his has a secure place in the canon of modem fiction. In his eighties he published ten books in thirteen years....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Salmagundi (Saratoga Springs) 2023-10 (220/221), p.117-191
Main Author: Meyers, Jeffrey
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brain
Death & dying
Faulkner, William (1897-1962)
Fiction
Novels
Prose
Reputations
Salter, James
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Summary:On September 7,1997, when Salter had been writing for forty years, Samuel Hynes observed in the New York Times Book Review that "his reputation is of a curious kind; no single book of his has a secure place in the canon of modem fiction. In his eighties he published ten books in thirteen years. 1 A fighter pilot combines the skill of a brain surgeon with the risk of a matador. [...]he did have his Air Force pension, his pay from joining the Air National Guard and his wife's money from her wealthy Virginia fox-hunting family. After the austere prose of his early war books he was no longer interested in traditional narrative and chronological structure, and used a radically different style and form in his third and fourth novels, A Sport and a Pastime and Light Years.
ISSN:0036-3529
2330-0876