National Book Award winner John Casey has a great summary of Salter’s writing in the introduction (Casey was later sanctioned from teaching further at UVA due to sexual harassment and gender bias claims just as a slightly non sequitur FYI).
In his inaugural lecture as a UVA Kapnick Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, Salter offered that “books are passwords”, this is the idea that among those who are well read--books are a connection, a filial link of brotherhood amidst theretofore strangers. Reading Salter's lectures in this slim collection affirms the notions that I (most of us?) have about great and famous writers--about their life experiences and methods.
Take for example the glimpse that Salter offers from the end of his short story, “The Captain’s Wife” (later expanded to become Burning the Days). The characters returns to a house after dinner, where they drink, makes toasts and read from their favorite books. This is just the sort of activity that one imagines famed writers doing--their favorite passages at their immediate recall to conjure up at dinner parties etc.
For any fan of Salter these lectures are essential reading, chocked full of autobiographical details on the author and his views on writing, literature, and life. Below are my three favorite quotes from the book.
“Books mark a period or place, and then gradually they become that place or time.” Salter on the timelessness of certain books that become or qualify as literature.
“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.”
What happens next” is the central driving point--the “engine” of all literature. This is what good writing, good stories embody.
See our 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.
Key Quotes:
xiii “No, everything I’ve ever learned, has come from books. I’d be in darkness without them” (from Burning the Days)
xxi “The short story does the work of a novel in 15 pages.” -Peter Taylor (Pullitizer Prize Winning author of A Summons to Memphis
xxx “It happens in an instant. It is all one long day, one endless afternoon, friends leave, we stand on the shore.” (from Light Years)
6 “Books are passwords” this is the idea that among those who are well read--books are a connection, a filial link of brotherhood amongst heretofore strangers.
11 “There was no iron that could pierce the human heart with as much force as a period in just the right place.” Salter quoting author Isaac Babel
12 “Instead I went to France, where you can always feel it’s worthwhile to be a writer and where I had always been able to write.”
15 “A good sentence in prose, should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.” Salter quoting Gustave Flaubert
20 “Style is a preference; a voice is almost genetic, absolutely distinctive.” Salter on the development of a writer who begin by mimicking.
55 “But Monsieur Heller, after Catch 22, you never wrote anything that good again.” A question from a French journalist. Heller’s response: “Who has?”
61 “Books mark a period or place, and then gradually they become that place or time.” Salter on the timelessness of certain books that become or qualify as literature.
77 “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.”
Key Takeaways:
20 The beginning writer has no voice--instead their writing is a reflection of their influences
30 “What happens next” is the central driving point--the “engine” of all literature. This is what good writing, good stories embody.
32 For Garcia Marquez the most difficult part of writing a novel was the first paragraph. After spending months writing it, he noted that the rest of the story came easy because that first paragraph captured the style and tone of the novel
49-50 Famed and controversial author, Evelyn Waugh, noted how involved the difficult act of writing is--the act being the conglomeration, the sum of one’s experiences being processed and analyzed and polished and ordered.
50 Every writer aims to write a masterpiece (according to famed critic Cyril Connolly) and when someone succeeds it brings sorrow to all other writers who believe there to be a finite number of them in the universe.
50 Famed author John Irving always wrote the last line of his novel first. Then his writing process was just to write toward that line.
58 Never begin a sentence with an adverb--the sentence itself must be the revealer of action.
60-1 In Salter’s books the woman was always stronger. This is notably true in Light Years.
64 The end of Salter’s short story “The Captain’s Wife” (later to become Burning the Days), he offers a glimpse into how many of us imagine the life of famed writers: After dinner the group returns to one of their houses where they drink, makes toasts and read from their favorite books.
Key References (for further study):
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/06/06/james-salter-glory-certain-moments-life/
viii “My First Goose” pivotal formative short story for Salter (by Isaac Babel)
xv Irvin Shaw another key writer for Salter, notably referenced in a chapter called “Forgotten Kings” in his memoir Burning the Days
xviii “Dirt”, “The Cinema”, and “The Destruction of the Goetheanum” three notable short stories from Dusk
xxi: A Summons to Memphis
1 Marguerite Duras The Lover
2 Balzac Old Goriot
5 Junichoro Tanizaki The Makioka Sisters and Miklos Banffy The Transylvanian Trilogy and Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers
7 Robert Phelps The Literary Life
18 Maupassant “Ball of Fat”
22 Jack Kerouac The Town and the City
40 Celine Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan
50 William Kennedy Legs
56 James Jones From Here to Eternity
63 James Salter “The Captain’s Wife” which became Burning the Days
64 Noel Coward Cavalcade and Gerald Edwards Ebenezer le Page and James Joyce “The Dead” and Anna Karenina and Humboldt’s Gift and The Wapshot Chronicle and Robert Service, Stephen King, and Poe
66 Salter’s most important authors: Nabokov, Faulkner, Saul Bellow, and Isaac Singer
xiii “No, everything I’ve ever learned, has come from books. I’d be in darkness without them” (from Burning the Days)
xxi “The short story does the work of a novel in 15 pages.” -Peter Taylor (Pullitizer Prize Winning author of A Summons to Memphis
xxx “It happens in an instant. It is all one long day, one endless afternoon, friends leave, we stand on the shore.” (from Light Years)
6 “Books are passwords” this is the idea that among those who are well read--books are a connection, a filial link of brotherhood amongst heretofore strangers.
11 “There was no iron that could pierce the human heart with as much force as a period in just the right place.” Salter quoting author Isaac Babel
12 “Instead I went to France, where you can always feel it’s worthwhile to be a writer and where I had always been able to write.”
15 “A good sentence in prose, should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.” Salter quoting Gustave Flaubert
20 “Style is a preference; a voice is almost genetic, absolutely distinctive.” Salter on the development of a writer who begin by mimicking.
55 “But Monsieur Heller, after Catch 22, you never wrote anything that good again.” A question from a French journalist. Heller’s response: “Who has?”
61 “Books mark a period or place, and then gradually they become that place or time.” Salter on the timelessness of certain books that become or qualify as literature.
77 “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.”
Key Takeaways:
20 The beginning writer has no voice--instead their writing is a reflection of their influences
30 “What happens next” is the central driving point--the “engine” of all literature. This is what good writing, good stories embody.
32 For Garcia Marquez the most difficult part of writing a novel was the first paragraph. After spending months writing it, he noted that the rest of the story came easy because that first paragraph captured the style and tone of the novel
49-50 Famed and controversial author, Evelyn Waugh, noted how involved the difficult act of writing is--the act being the conglomeration, the sum of one’s experiences being processed and analyzed and polished and ordered.
50 Every writer aims to write a masterpiece (according to famed critic Cyril Connolly) and when someone succeeds it brings sorrow to all other writers who believe there to be a finite number of them in the universe.
50 Famed author John Irving always wrote the last line of his novel first. Then his writing process was just to write toward that line.
58 Never begin a sentence with an adverb--the sentence itself must be the revealer of action.
60-1 In Salter’s books the woman was always stronger. This is notably true in Light Years.
64 The end of Salter’s short story “The Captain’s Wife” (later to become Burning the Days), he offers a glimpse into how many of us imagine the life of famed writers: After dinner the group returns to one of their houses where they drink, makes toasts and read from their favorite books.
Key References (for further study):
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/06/06/james-salter-glory-certain-moments-life/
viii “My First Goose” pivotal formative short story for Salter (by Isaac Babel)
xv Irvin Shaw another key writer for Salter, notably referenced in a chapter called “Forgotten Kings” in his memoir Burning the Days
xviii “Dirt”, “The Cinema”, and “The Destruction of the Goetheanum” three notable short stories from Dusk
xxi: A Summons to Memphis
1 Marguerite Duras The Lover
2 Balzac Old Goriot
5 Junichoro Tanizaki The Makioka Sisters and Miklos Banffy The Transylvanian Trilogy and Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers
7 Robert Phelps The Literary Life
18 Maupassant “Ball of Fat”
22 Jack Kerouac The Town and the City
40 Celine Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan
50 William Kennedy Legs
56 James Jones From Here to Eternity
63 James Salter “The Captain’s Wife” which became Burning the Days
64 Noel Coward Cavalcade and Gerald Edwards Ebenezer le Page and James Joyce “The Dead” and Anna Karenina and Humboldt’s Gift and The Wapshot Chronicle and Robert Service, Stephen King, and Poe
66 Salter’s most important authors: Nabokov, Faulkner, Saul Bellow, and Isaac Singer
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