James Salter

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This article is about the American writer. For the British politician and academic, see James Salter, 1st Baron Salter.
James Salter
Born: June 10, 1925
New York, New York
Occupation: Writer
Literary movement: Impressionist
Influences: Andre Gide, Thomas Wolfe, Jean Genet, Celine, Henry de Montherlant

James Salter (born June 10, 1925, New York City) is an American short story writer and novelist.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Salter was born James A. Horowitz, the son of a moderately wealthy entrepreneur. He entered West Point in 1942, at the urging of his alumnus father, and graduated in 1945. He served twelve years in the U.S. Air Force as a fighter pilot before leaving the military to pursue a writing career, a decision he found difficult because of his passion for flying. His works based on his Air Force experiences have a fatalistic tone about them in that his protagonists, after struggling with conflicts between their reputations and self-perceptions, are killed in the performance of duties while antagonists within their own ranks soldier on.

During the Korean War Horowitz was assigned to the 335th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, a renowned MiG-hunting unit. He flew more than 100 combat missions in the F-86 Sabre between February 12 and August 6, 1952, and was credited with a MiG victory July 4, 1952. He used his Korean experience for his first novel, The Hunters (1956), which was made into a Hollywood film starring Robert Mitchum in 1958. Salter published a collection, Dusk and Other Stories in 1988. The collection received the PEN/Faulkner Award. He extensively re-wrote his 1961 novel The Arm of Flesh, reissued in 2000 as Cassada, and drew on his experiences flying with the 36th Fighter-Day Wing at Bitburg Air Base, Germany, between 1954 and 1957.

Widely regarded as one of the most gifted artistic writers of modern American fiction, Salter himself is critical of his own work, having stated that only A Sport and a Pastime comes close to living up to his standards. Set in post-war France, the novel is a piece of erotica involving an American student and young French girl, told as flashbacks in the present tense by an unnamed narrator who barely knows the student and who himself yearns for the girl, and who freely admits that most of his narration is fantasy.

The movie version of The Hunters was honored with much acclaim for its powerful performances, moving plot, and realistic portrayal of the Korean conflict. Although an excellent adaptation for Hollywood, it was very different from the original novel, which dealt with the slow self-destruction of a 31-year-old fighter pilot, once thought to be a "hot shot" but who found nothing but frustration in his first combat experience while others around him achieved glory, some of it perhaps invented.

Salter's prose shows apparent influences from both Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller, but in interviews with his biographer, William Dowie, he states that he was most influenced by Andre Gide and Thomas Wolfe. Often described by reviewers as "succinct" or "compressed", it uses crisply drawn impressions from seemingly fleeting images to make both settings and characters leap off the page. although often heavy with simile. His sentence structure is short, often fragmentary in some works, and he writes comfortably both in the 1st and 3rd persons, and in the present and past tenses. His dialogue is attributed only enough to keep clear who is speaking but otherwise allows the reader to draw inferences on tone and motivation.

His memoir Burning the Days uses this prose style to chronicle the impact his experiences at West Point, in the Air Force, and as a celebrity pseudo-expatriate in Europe had on the way he viewed his life-style changes. Although it appears to celebrate numerous episodes of adultery as an unpredicatble consequence of living, Salter is in fact reflecting on what has transpired and the impressions of himself it has left, just as does his poignant reminiscence on the death of his daughter. A line from The Hunters expresses these feelings: "They knew nothing of the past and its holiness."

Salter was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2000.

[edit] Works

  • The Hunters (novel, 1957)
  • The Arm of Flesh (novel, 1961; republished as Cassada, 2000)
  • A Sport and a Pastime (novel, 1967)
  • Downhill Racer (screenplay, 1969)
  • The Appointment (screenplay, 1969)
  • Three (screenplay, 1969; also directed)
  • Light Years (novel, 1975)
  • Solo Faces (novel, 1979)
  • Threshold (screenplay, 1981)
  • Dusk and Other Stories (short stories, 1988; PEN/Faulkner Award 1989)
  • Still Such (poetry, 1988)
  • Burning the Days (memoir, 1997)
  • Gods of Tin (compilation memoir, 2004; selections from The Hunters, Cassada, and Burning the Days)
  • Last Night (short stories, 2005)
  • There and Then: The Travel Writing of James Salter (essays, 2005)

[edit] Sources

[edit] External links

Still Such (poetry), 1988

[edit] Additional Reading

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