Kruse's Keys: Read "Don't Save Anything" For the Terrific Profile Pieces

Salter’s wife put together a collection of his essays and articles and entitled it “Don’t Save Anything”. The title comes from Salter’s long time advice “don’t save anything”--meaning don’t reserve any writing ideas or details for a later piece, rather pour everything you have into each piece. It’s a fitting title representing some of the best writing from Salter, the authors’ author.

In particular, I was struck by the Salter’s terrific profile pieces in the book--I’ve never read such masterful writing in this genre. Reading them made me wish he’d done biographies. He has this honed skill in placing the subject in a specific setting from which the story naturally flows. He effortlessly places his own observations amidst the history. In his profile on the fall of Clinton, for example, he lays hard into the president’s for his inability to just own his mistake with a “manly confession”; however, he’s finally won over by Clinton’s grit and perseverance commenting that “there is no real beauty without some slight imperfection”.

The most worthwhile gems in the book come when Salter ruminates on the nature of writing as art and calling. He likens the call to write to a prison, “an island from which you will never be released but which is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the thoughts, the incredible joy of putting into words the essence of what you for the moment understand and with your whole heart want to believe.” He also trumpets the ultimate importance of reading both specifically (as in authors) and broadly (as in across genres), noting that “a true education [is] based on being well read.”

Finally, aspiring writers might take stark comfort in Salter’s observation that “you cannot teach someone to write any more than you can teach them to be interesting.” But this speaks to the “magic” of writing for Salter--more a religion really--it was his lifeblood and it showed in his stories and lines.

I must also add that I thoroughly enjoyed the six rules for the ideal houseguest (according to the famed Random House editor Joe Fox):

1. Never arrive too early

2. Bring a gift the hostess will love 

3. Stay to yourself at least three hours a day 

4. Play all their games 

5. Don’t sleep in the wrong bed 

6. Leave on time

See our 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Salter's Mentions These Influential Books

Key Takeaways:

Terrific military profile pieces

171 Links the idea of manhood to earning the friendship of someone you respect

228 Paris' beautiful twilight hour referred to commonly as: cinq a sept

Key Quotes:

From “Why I Write”

7 “There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.”

8  “In the end, writing is like a prison, an island from which you will never be released but which is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the thoughts, the incredible joy of putting into words the essence of what you for the moment understand and with your whole heart want to believe.”

From “An Army Mule Named Sid Berry Takes Command at the Point”

75 LTG Sid Berry, West Point Superintendent who supervised the integration of women into its student body:  “Generals must become more politically aware but not more politically involved.”

From “Ike the Unlikely”

87 “Generals who do not fail, succeed”, Salter on Eisenhower who passed his peers in rising to position of supreme commander.

From “Younger Women, Older Men”

96 “Happiness is often at its most intense when it is based on inequality”, Salter offers an argument in support of his hypothesis explaining the link between older men and younger women.

98 “A women, as the Russian proverb goes, is a complete civilization.”

103  “With women it is different, she declares, women have but one summer”, a woman who is saying that women have only their looks for a season in life and then it is gone as compared to men.  Personally, I disagree as my own wife is more beautiful now than a decade ago.  

From “Karyl and Me”

107  “You cannot teach someone to write any more than you can teach them to be interesting.”

107  “She lacked the ego to persevere, ego strengthened by the knowledge that there is nothing else, it is write or disappear.” Salter on this friend’s writing.

From “Talk of the Town on Bill Clinton”

115 “In the event of wrongdoing, a manly confession and a pious resolve”, Salter on Clinton’s flaw in his scandal.

116  “There is no real beauty without some slight imperfection” Salter on Clinton and his grit.

From “Racing for the Cup”

163 Auden line from his poem Voltaire at Ferney: The white Alps glittered. He was very great.

From “Getting High”

168 “If you come off now, we’re both going”, a somber warning in partner climbing.

175 “Climbing is more than a sport. It is entry into a myth” Salter on the allure of climbing.

176-7  “Mountains cannot be assassinated nor the heights won in a single day.  The glory belongs only to those who have earned it and usually over a period of time.  In this regard, the morality is absolute. There are no upsets, no undeserved triumphs.  In one sense, there is no luck. This severity gives the sport its strength. There is a paradise and a final judgment. Above all, climbing is honest.  Honor is its essence.” Salter defines climbing.

177 “[Climbing] accomplishes nothing except for personal pleasure.” Salter on the self-indulgent aspect of climbing.

From “Passionate Falsehoods”

204 “I suppose I have always rejected the idea of actors as heroes, and no intimacy with any of them has changed this.  Actors are idols. Heroes are those with something at stake.” Salter on heroes and actors.

From “Snowy Nights in Aspen”

270 Joe Fox’s (famed Random House editor) six rules for being the ideal houseguest

1. Never arrive too early
2. Bring a gift the hostess will love
3. Stay to yourself at least three hours a day
4. Play all their games
5. Don’t sleep in the wrong bed
6. Leave on time

From “Once upon time, literature.  Now What?”

278  “A true education was based on being well read.” Salter on his formative years.

281 “What we call literature, which is really only writing that never stops being read, is part of this.”  Salter connecting literature to art as the real history of nations and offers it as a counterpoint to pop culture.  

Key References for Further Study (to include my reviews of other Salter books):

5 Town and City and Look Homeward Angel

12 Stop Time Conroy
15 Red Cavalry by Babel
28 Conrad and Henry James, The Man WIthin
29 Jean Rhys
34 Speak, Memory
39 Life of Charlotte Bronte
69 great vignette on a cool head while flying
95 Between Meals
171 The Diamond Hike
194 Team, Team, Team
205 Three

My Reflections on Salter's Passing on 2015
A Sport and a Pastime Kindle Notes (2015)
All That Is Kindle Notes and Highlights (2015)
Kruse's Keys: Read "Light Years" to Witness the Danger of Untended Love
Last Night (Short Story Collection) Kindle Notes and Highlights (2015)
Kruse's Keys: Read "Burning the Days" to Watch the Burning Pursuit of Immortality
Kruse's Keys: Read "Solo Faces" to Cherish the Struggle (2015)