James Salter, RIP

One of finest voices in contemporary American fiction, now gone down. On June 19, 2015.

Here is what he said in a Paris Review interview about his masterly novel "Light Years"...

The book is the worn stones of conjugal life. All that is beautiful, all that is plain, everything that nourishes or causes to wither. It goes on for years, decades, and in the end seems to have passed like things glimpsed from the train—a meadow here, a stand of trees, houses with lit windows in the dusk, darkened towns, stations flashing by—everything that is not written down disappears except for certain imperishable moments, people and scenes. The animals die, the house is sold, the children are grown, even the couple itself has vanished, and yet there is this poem. It was criticized as elitist, but I’m not sure this is so. The two of them are really rather unexceptional. She was beautiful, but that passed; he was devoted, but not strong enough really to hold onto life. The title was originally “Nedra and Viri”—in my books, the woman is always the stronger. If you can believe this book, and it is true, there is a dense world built on matrimony, a life enclosed, as it says, in ancient walls. It is about the sweetness of those unending days.
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Published on July 01, 2015 08:00
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