“I am not telling the truth about Dean,” the unnamed narrator warns the reader early in A Sport and a Pastime. One cannot introduce the work of James Salter without mentioning his unmistakable prose. Material, craft, and affect: Salter had a poet’s sense of aspect and essence, with power sustained across the long-form. It’s all presented with gratuitous honestyAnd this transaction is, of course, the truth about sexual love. To be privy to Dean and Anne-Marie’s entanglement is to look in on our own private, impure bedrooms, our own desires and crimes.

Source: The Guardian February 17, 2017 13:00 UTC