A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport And A Pastime (1967) is a novel by the American writer James Salter.

Summary

Set in France in the early 1960s, the sad and tender story concerns the erotic affair of American middle-class college drop-out Philip Dean and young French girl, Anne-Marie, as witnessed by a self-consciously unreliable narrator. The unnamed narrator freely admits that much of his observation is in fact his own fantasy of the couple, and includes a number of sexually-explicit descriptions of their day-to-day existence as he imagines it.

Reception

The book is generally regarded by critics as a modern classic. In the New York Times Book Review, novelist and critic Reynolds Price wrote, "Of living novelists, none has produced a novel I admire more than A Sport and a Pastime . . . it's as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know."[1] The critic and biographer Adam Begley, in the New York Times Magazine, called it "extraordinary . . . The book feels utterly true."[2]

Location

Many of the story's events take place in the town of Autun in Burgundy. In the novel, Philip Dean drives a 1952 Delage.

References

  1. ↑ Reynolds Price, The New York Times, "Well Begun is Half Done," June 2, 1985.
  2. ↑ Adam Begley, The New York Times Magazine, "A Few Well-Chosen Words," October 28, 1990.