Buy It Because: You love Salter. If you don't know Salter, don't worry, I didn't either until last year (shame). Salter writes books that you can finish and immediately want to reread. He's a writer in the same class as Markham and Hemingway. He may be the best American writer in the last 50 years.
Back to Solo Faces. This book is nominally about rock climbing but, like everything that Salter writes, it's really about relationships...a little about male-female ones but more deeply about male-male friendships and rivalries. And very deeply about men's internal dialogue. This self-conversation--one filled with loathing, lust, hope, doubt, and notions of courage--is where Salter is the master. His tales leave the reader with the 'sense' of this struggle...a sense that sticks to you like a recurring dream.
And when it comes to describing and capturing a city or country's essence, I challenge you to find someone who does it better:
He began to see France, not just a mountain village filled with tourists, but the deep, invincible center which, if entered at all, becomes part of the blood. Of course, he did not know the meaning of the many avenues Carnot or boulevards Jean Jaurès, the streets named Gambetta, Hugo, even Pasteur. The pageant of kings and republics was nothing to him, but the way in which a great civilization preserves itself, this was what he unknowingly saw. For France is conscious of its brilliance. To grasp it means to sit at its table, sleep beneath its roofs, marry its children.
France was like a great, quarreling family, the Algerians, the old women with their dogs, the people in restaurants, the police—a huge, bickering family bound eternally by hatred and blood.
Paris—it was like a great terminal he was already leaving, with a multitude of signs, neon and enamel, repeated again and again as if announcing a performance. The people of Paris with their cigarettes and dogs, the stone roofs and restaurants, green buses, gray walls, he had held their attention for a moment.
My Kindle Highlights:
Beneath the eucalyptus branches a signboard covered with glass announced the Sunday sermon: Sexuality and God.Read more at location 23
A breed of aimless wanderers can be found in California, working as mason’s helpers, carpenters, parking cars. They somehow keep a certain dignity, they are surprisingly unashamed. It’s one thing to know their faces will become lined, their plain talk stupid, that they will be crushed in the end by those who stayed in school, bought land, practiced law. Still, they have an infuriating power, that of condemned men. They can talk to anybody, they can speak the truth.Read more at location 44
There are two Los Angeleses, they like to say, sometimes more, but in fact there is only one, six lanes wide with distant palms and one end vanishing in the sea.Read more at location 92
She admired him, she trusted him completely. He had hair that had gone too long without being cut, fine nostrils, long legs. He was filled with a kind of freedom that was almost visible. She saw where he had been. He had crossed the country, slept in barns and fields, dry riverbeds.Read more at location 127
Women look like one thing when you don’t know them and another when you do.Read more at location 160
“Oh, Christ,” she said. She was too tired to make love. It had been left on the dance floor. Or else she did, halfheartedly, and like two bodies from an undiscovered crime they lay,Read more at location 175
the valley opened. There, at its end, unexpected, bathed in light, was the great peak of Europe, Mont Blanc. It was larger than one could imagine, and closer, covered in snow. That first immense image changed his life. It seemed to drown him, to rise with an infinite slowness like a wave above his head.Read more at location 348
British climbing had changed since the war. Once the province of university men, it had been invaded by the working class who cut their teeth on the rock of Scotland and Wales and then traveled everywhere, suspicious and unfriendly. They came from the blackened cities of England—Manchester, Leeds. To the mountains they brought the same qualities—toughness and courage—that let them survive in the slums. They had no credo, no code. They had bad teeth, bad manners and one ambition: to conquer.Read more at location 541
There was a teller at the Banque Payot who glanced at him in a certain way. She was about thirty, with a narrow face that had something hidden in it, like a woman who has ruined herself for love.Read more at location 656
They walked by the river, the water was rattling past. He felt an almost physical pain being near her, the desire was so great. He wanted to look at her, regard her openly, see her smoke a cigarette, remove her stockings.Read more at location 679
A great mountain is serious. It demands everything of a climber, absolutely all. It must be difficult and also beautiful, it must lie in the memory like the image of an unforgettable woman. It must be unsoiled.Read more at location 782
“That’s a terrific line,” he said, his eye ascending one last time. “It could take us right to the top, you know?” “Or farther.Read more at location 787
He spoke calmly, intimately. He wrote down nothing. He knew the mountains well, having climbed himself. There was an ease about him, that of an aristocrat who has been out in the garden and is wearing old clothes.Read more at location 1014
The back streets of town were his, the upper meadows, the airy peaks. It was the year when everything beckons, when one is finally loved. The clippings were folded and put away. He pretended to scorn them. He kept them despite himself. The true form of legend, he believed, was spoken. He did not want to be catalogued in newspapers, he said, read and discarded like sports scores and crimes.Read more at location 1056
What he had done, what he would do, he did not want explained. Something was lost that way. The things that were of greatest value, that he had paid so much for were his alone.Read more at location 1072
He seemed urgent, overpowering to her. She had no desires of her own. She had abandoned them, made them his. His intensity almost frightened her, his abruptness.Read more at location 1134
Bray: He hadn’t the imagination which is indispensable to greatness. Supreme climbs need more than courage, they need inspiration. He was a sergeant in the ranks—perhaps, in tumultuous times, he might be a colonel, one who wears his blouse unbuttoned and gets drunk with the men.Read more at location 1155
Write down the names, she had said, of your three closest friends and I will circle the name of your deadliest enemy.Read more at location 1187
A lifetime and more. He began to see France, not just a mountain village filled with tourists, but the deep, invincible center which, if entered at all, becomes part of the blood. Of course, he did not know the meaning of the many avenues Carnot or boulevards Jean Jaurès, the streets named Gambetta, Hugo, even Pasteur. The pageant of kings and republics was nothing to him, but the way in which a great civilization preserves itself, this was what he unknowingly saw. For France is conscious of its brilliance. To grasp it means to sit at its table, sleep beneath its roofs, marry its children.Read more at location 1210
Immortal mornings. His genitals were heavy, like the dark, smooth stone carved by the Eskimos. They had a gravity, a denseness he could not believe.Read more at location 1214
She was like a drowned woman, she was sunk in bed like a burial at sea.Read more at location 1216
Being a mannequin was a help; I developed a taste for luxury.” Her voice was powerful and flowing. She used it like a stream of water. Her laugh was hoarse, the laugh of a free woman.Read more at location 1248
“He began to climb the most difficult peaks in Europe. Climbing is more than a sport. That’s true. Ça dure toujours—it lasts forever.Read more at location 1271
He had left his wife, he wasn’t working, and still he felt if he climbed one more mountain, the most difficult, everything would somehow fall into place. It was like a drug. He constantly had to have more and more, and the doses had to be bigger.Read more at location 1279
He felt handsome in her presence, alive. She was like a mirror in which he saw himself perfectly.Read more at location 1304
France was like a great, quarreling family, the Algerians, the old women with their dogs, the people in restaurants, the police—a huge, bickering family bound eternally by hatred and blood.Read more at location 1311
THE EIGER IS THE great wall of Europe. It exists in a class by itself. Six thousand feet high,Read more at location 1332
Something had been sacrificed in the way it all was arranged. The climb was not classic—it was, in a sense, corrupt. The conquest of heights by any means and for whatever purpose is questionable. Of course, this was never brought up. The involvement was too great and Cabot was too compelling a figure. He was the kind of man who did not conform to standards, he created them.Read more at location 1379
“Listen, Audrey, it’s hard to explain.” He paused for a moment. “I didn’t make him do anything, he did it for the same reason I did. The mountains make you do it. You do it because of yourself.” She stood by the window staring out at the snow. She was hugging herself, her arms clasped beneath her breasts. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said wearily. The way she was holding herself, as if she could expect nothing more from life, the clothes and cosmetics on the dresser, the pale square of bed reflecting light, these seemed to be speaking for her. The room was warm. The silence was mounting, like a bill that would have to be paid.Read more at location 1459
There she was happy or at least freed from the difficulty of loving the wrong person. It would be wrong to say she did not think of him, but she did so with less and less frequency.Read more at location 1544
“I was really miserable,” she said. “I had the most depressing thoughts. I wanted to kill myself and have a gravestone like Dumas’ mistress with nothing but four dates, one in each corner: the date I met him, the date we first made love …Read more at location 1551
There are men who seem destined to always go first, to lead the way. They are confident in life, they are the first to go beyond it. Whatever there is to know, they learn before others. Their very existence gives strength and drives one onward. Love and jealousy were mingled there in the darkness, love and despair.Read more at location 1725
One woman is like another. Two are like another two. Once you begin there is no end.Read more at location 1881
“I found him extraordinary,” Simone admitted. “But he also made me nervous. I never really knew what to talk about with him. He’s not exactly a polymath. He knows nothing about politics, art, and yet I found myself perfectly willing to believe in him. Whatever it is, he has it despite himself.” “I think it’s mainly an ability to look good in old clothes.Read more at location 1936
They were not wives, they were not meant to be wives. They were witnesses. For some reason he trusted only women and for each of them he assumed a somewhat different pose. They were the bearers of his story, scattered throughout the world.Read more at location 1947
Paris—it was like a great terminal he was already leaving, with a multitude of signs, neon and enamel, repeated again and again as if announcing a performance. The people of Paris with their cigarettes and dogs, the stone roofs and restaurants, green buses, gray walls, he had held their attention for a moment. The affiches with his face on them were vanished but he had stayed on. He saw it clearly as, at a certain place in life, one sees both the beginning and end: Paris had forgotten him.Read more at location 1995
“He’s a strange guy. He’s like a searchlight. When he turns your way, he just dazzles you. Afterward, you’re left in darkness, you might as well not be alive.Read more at location 2029
Rand looked up. He reached for it. “Let me have that,” he said. “Do you know anything at all about this guy?” “Who is it?” “Mayakovsky. I have to find out more about him.Read more at location 2072
She had nothing for him, he could see that. Nothing remained. She was cool, disinterested. She had already assumed the beauty that belongs to strangers.Read more at location 2238
Catherin! he almost cried. It seemed as if all that had gone before was a journey, that the road had brought him here and ended. He did not know what to do. He stood there. Above him the leaves were sighing faintly, the weight of languorous hours upon them, of endless summer days.Read more at location 2272
“I told her I’d been climbing for fifteen years. For most of that, ten years anyway, it was the most important thing in my life. It was the only thing. I sacrificed everything to it. Do you know the one thing I learned about climbing? The one single thing?” “What?” “It is of no importance whatsoever.Read more at location 2410
“I want to trust someone,” she said. She was not looking at him but at the floor. “I want to feel something. With you, though, it’s like somehow it goes into empty air.” “Empty air …” “Yes.” “Well, what you have to do is hold on,” he said. “Don’t get scared.” “Really?” “I can’t tell you any more than that.” “Hold on …,” she said. “That’s right.” He sees it there in the darkness, not a vision, not a sign, but a genuine shelter if he can only reach it. In the lighted room are figures, he sees them clearly, sometimes seated together, sometimes moving, a man and a woman visible through the window, in the dusk, the Florida rain.
