Last Night by James Salter: My Notes and Kindle Highlights

2015 Reading List

Last Night is the first book of short stories that I've read by Salter .  The pages pass quickly with this collection--with characters and narratives that approach the outlandish at times. 

Outlandish can be a good thing.  

These stories are mainly about Salter's thoughts on the women and relationships but at times faint echoes of regret emerge.

But the best part of reading Salter are his sentences and descriptions.  My highlights are below.  

My Lord You

His gaze, somehow reproachful, drifted away. He was like a fugitive sleeping on his coat. His eyes were nearly closed. My life has meant nothing, she thought. She wanted above all else not to confess that.Read more at location 628

Give

She was just thirty-one, the age when women are past foolishness though not unfeeling.Read more at location 852

It was easy to find things she would like. Our taste was the same, it had been from the first. It would be impossible to live with someone otherwise. I’ve always thought it was the most important single thing, though people may not realize it. Perhaps it’s transmitted to them in the way someone dresses or, for that matter, undresses, but taste is a thing no one is born with, it’s learned, and at a certain point it can’t be altered.Read more at location 909

The small things that could be overlooked at first but in time became annoying, we had a way of handling, of getting the pebble out of the shoe, so to speak. It was called a give, and it was agreed that it would last. The phrase that was over-used, an eating habit, even a piece of favorite clothing, a give was a request to abandon it. You couldn’t ask for something, only to stop something. The wide skirt of the bathroom sink was always wiped dry because of a give. Anna’s little finger no longer extended when she drank from a cup. There might be more than one thing you would like to ask, and there was sometimes difficulty in choosing, but there was the satisfaction of knowing that once a year, without causing resentment, you would be able to ask your husband or wife to stop this one thing.Read more at location 913

I felt the injustice for a long time. He’d brought only pleasure to us, and if to me particularly, that didn’t diminish it. I had some photographs that I kept in a certain place, and of course I had the poems. I followed him from afar, the way a woman does a man she was never able to marry. The glittering blue water slid past as he made his way between the islands. There was Ios, white in the haze, where the dust of Homer lay, they said.Read more at location 971

Platinum

THE BRULE apartment had a magnificent view of the park, bare and vast in winter and in the summer a rich sea of green. The apartment was in a fine building, narrow but tall, and it was in a way comforting to think of how many others there were, dignified and calm, building upon fine building, all with their unsmiling doormen and solemn entrances.Read more at location 975

Palm Court

LATE ONE AFTERNOON, near the close, his assistant, Kenny, palm over the mouthpiece, said there was someone named Noreen on the phone.Read more at location 1243

She was not looking at him. She was studying her hands. Then she smiled again. She was forgiving him, he felt. That was it. She always understood. They talked on, but not about much. He left through the same foyer with its worn mosaic tile and people coming in. It was still light outside, the pure full light before evening, the sun in a thousand windows facing the park. Walking along the street in their heels, alone or together, were girls such as Noreen had been, many of them. They were not really going to meet for lunch sometime. He thought of the love that had filled the great central chamber of his life and how he would not meet anyone like that again. He did not know what came over him, but on the street he broke into tears.Read more at location 1450

Bangkok

HOLLIS WAS IN THE BACK at a table piled with books and a space among them where he was writing when Carol came in.Read more at location 1457

It was not a pretend life.Read more at location 1605

Arlington

Newell wanted to confide in Westerveldt. He sat silent, however, unable to begin. He was helplessly in love with this woman. When she dressed up she was simply beautiful. If you saw them together in the Wienerstube, his round white brow gleaming in the light and her across from him, smoking, you would wonder, how did he ever get her? She was insolent but there were times when she was not. To put your hand on the small of her naked back was to have all you ever hoped to possess.Read more at location 1625

Newell hadn’t walked back with the others, He had no excuse to do that. This was Arlington and here they all lay, formed up for the last time. He could almost hear the distant notes of adjutant’s call. He walked in the direction of the road they had come in on. With a sound at first faint but then clopping rhythmically he heard the hooves of horses, a team of six black horses with three erect riders and the now-empty caisson that had carried the coffin, the large spoked wheels rattling on the road. The riders, in their dark caps, did not look at him. The gravestones in dense, unbroken lines curved along the hillsides and down toward the river, as far as he could see, all the same height with here and there a larger, gray stone like an officer, mounted, amid the ranks. In the fading light they seemed to be waiting, fateful, massed as if for some great assault. For a moment he felt exalted by it, by the thought of all these dead, the history of the nation, its people. It was hard to get into Arlington. He would never lie there; he had given that up long ago. He would never know the days with Jana again, either. He remembered her at that moment as she had been, when she was so slender and young. He was loyal to her. It was one-sided, but that was enough. When at the end they had all stood with their hands over their hearts, Newell was to one side, alone, resolutely saluting, faithful, like the fool he had always been.Read more at location 1685

Last Night

It was a footstep and then, slowly, another—Susanna turned white—as Marit came unsteadily down the stairs. The makeup on her face was stale, and her dark lipstick showed fissures. He stared in disbelief. — Something went wrong, she said. — Are you all right? he asked foolishly. — No, you must have done it wrong.Read more at location 1869

That was how she and Walter came to part, upon being discovered by his wife. They met two or three times afterward, at his insistence, but to no avail. Whatever holds people together was gone. She told him she could not help it. That was just the way it was.Read more at location 1881