Publisher Description

James Salter's exalted place in American letters is based largely on the intense admiration of other writers, but his work resonates far beyond the realm of fellow craftsmen, addressing themes--youth, war, erotic love, marriage, life abroad, friendship--that speak to us all.

Following the publication of his first novel, Salter left behind a military career of great promise to write full-time and--through decades of searching, exacting work--became one of American literature's master stylists. Only months before he died, at the age of eighty-nine, he agreed to serve as the first Kapnick Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia, where he composed and delivered the three lectures presented in this book and introduced by his friend and fellow novelist, National Book Award-winning author John Casey.

Salter speaks to us here with an easy intimacy, sharing his unceasing enchantment with the books that made up his reading life, including works by Balzac, Flaubert, Babel (whose prose is ""like a handful of radium""), Dreiser, Céline, Faulkner. These talks provide an invaluable opportunity to see the way in which a great writer reads. They also offer a candid look at the writing life--the rejection letters, not one but two negative reviews in the New York Times for the same book, writing in the morning or at night and worrying about money during the long afternoons.

Salter raises the question, Why does one write? For wealth? For admiration, or a sense of ""importance""? Confronting a blank sheet that always offers too many choices, practicing a vocation that often demands one write instead of live, the answer for Salter was creating a style that captured experience, in a world where anything not written down fades away.

Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Lectures

Author Biography

James Salter was the acclaimed author of the novels A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years, and All That Is, the memoir Burning the Days, and the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning collection Dusk and Other Stories. He was the first Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer–in–Residence at the University of Virginia, a position inspired by William Faulkner's residency at the university in 1956–58.

Review

A confident precision is always there--whether Jim is writing about sexual longing, or when his subject is flying combat missions in Korea. What Jim believed, he was always able to express succinctly: 'Style is the entire writer.' These lectures make me miss him--his generous but undoubting voice."" — John Irving

""A last and very generous gift from the great James Salter. The reader feels his reverence for literature on every page, as well as his legendary precision. Any aspiring writer should read this book, if only to get a taste of how a master thinks and feels: specifically, poetically, always mindful of the necessary mystery at the heart of great art."" — George Saunders

Long Description

James Salter's exalted place in American letters is based largely on the intense admiration of other writers, but his work resonates far beyond the realm of fellow craftsmen, addressing themes--youth, war, erotic love, marriage, life abroad, friendship--that speak to us all. Following the publication of his first novel, Salter left behind a military career of great promise to write full-time and--through decades of searching, exacting work--became one of American literature's master stylists. Only months before he died, at the age of eighty-nine, he agreed to serve as the first Kapnick Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia, where he composed and delivered the three lectures presented in this book and introduced by his friend and fellow novelist, National Book Award-winning author John Casey. Salter speaks to us here with an easy intimacy, sharing his unceasing enchantment with the books that made up his reading life, including works by Balzac, Flaubert, Babel (whose prose is "like a handful of radium"), Dreiser, C

Review Quote (previous edition)

"A confident precision is always there--whether Jim is writing about sexual longing, or when his subject is flying combat missions in Korea. What Jim believed, he was always able to express succinctly: 'Style is the entire writer.' These lectures make me miss him--his generous but undoubting voice. "--John Irving

Review Quote

This is a slender book, but anyone who reveres the work of James Salter -- a sodality that includes John Irving, Richard Ford, George Saunders and John Casey-- will want to read it and keep it around. Here one of the great prose stylists of our time reflects on writing, favorite authors (Isaac Babel, Nabokov, Bellow), and the connection between life and fiction. Salter closes with his epigraph to his last novel, All That Is : '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.'

Description for Reader

James Salter was the acclaimed author of the novels A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years, and All That Is, the memoir Burning the Days, and the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning collection Dusk and Other Stories. He was the first Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia, a position inspired by William Faulkner's residency at the university in 1956-58.

Description for Sales People

This final work from the late James Salter offers a master's thoughts, at the age of eighty-nine, on his influences, his long life in fiction and film, and how he crafted experience into novels and stories that have endured. Justly celebrated for his style, Salter writes here with a tone that is easy, conversational, wise, while it conveys his belief in the power, even the heroism, of great writing. National Book Award winner John Casey introduces these essays with his own thoughts on the career and contributions of his friend and fellow novelist.

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