Bøger af James Salter

All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change. The life is that of Philip Bowman and we see his formative experiences as a young naval officer in battles off Okinawa, his post-war career as a book editor in New York, his trips to the great European cities - for publishing parties in London, romantic holidays in Paris. But despite his success, what eludes him is love. His first marriage goes bad, another fails to happen, finally he meets a woman who enthrals him before setting him on a course he could never imagine for himself. James Salter's dazzling, seductive and haunting novel offers a fiercely intimate account of the great shocks and grand pleasures of being alive.

Nedra and Viri are a married couple whose favoured life is centred around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach.

This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair. Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness-and then felt compelled to destroy it.

With prose at once stark and lyrical, Salter elucidates the spirit of those who abandon material pursuits in search of an unspoiled honesty. He tells of one man's quest to rise above the mundane in search of peace and self-fulfillment.

"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know," is how Reynolds Price (The New York Times) described this classic that has been a favorite of readers, both here and in Europe, for almost forty years. Set in provincial France in the 1960s, James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime is the intensely carnal story-part shocking reality, part feverish dream -of a love affair between a footloose Yale dropout and a young French girl. There is the seen and the unseen-and pages that burn with a rare intensity.

First published nearly a quarter-century ago and one of the very few short-story collections to win the PEN/Faulkner Award, this is American fiction at its most vitaleach narrative a masterpiece of sustained power and seemingly effortless literary grace. Two New York attorneys newly flush with wealth embark on a dissolute tour of Italy; an ambitious young screenwriter unexpectedly discovers the true meaning of art and glory; a rider, far off in the fields, is involved in an horrific accidentnight is falling, and she must face her destiny alone. These stories confirm James Salter as one of the finest writers of our time.BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James Salter's All That Is.

The seductive classic that established Salter's reputation as one of the finest prose stylists of our time

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 "e;like a handful of radium"e;), Dreiser, Cline, 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 "e;importance"e;? 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

Last Night is a spellbinding collection of stories about passion - by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating. A lover of poetry is asked by his wife to give up what may be his most treasured friendship. A book dealer is forced to face the truth when a figure from his past pays an unexpected visit. In the title story, a husband has promised to assist his wife's suicide.Drawn in by a lingering swirl of tone, revelation and insight, the reader of these ten powerful stories will be transfixed as, seemingly without effort, Salter finds the charged moments that will come to shape a fate and detonates them before our very eyes.

This is the brilliant memoir of a man who starts out in Manhattan and comes of age in the skies over Korea, before emerging as one of America's finest authors in the New York of the 1960s. Burning the Days showcases James Salter's uniquely beautiful style with some of the most evocative pages about flying ever written, together with portraits of the actors, directors and authors who later influenced him. It is an unforgettable book about passion, ambition and what it means to live and to write.

Rand lives free; lean, pure and defiant, the world has little influence on him. His passion is climbing the mountains, the huge vertical faces. There, where storms, snow, or rockfall can kill, he finds his happiness, sometimes climbing with others, sometimes alone. This is a novel of obsession and where it leads. Rand, not intending it, becomes suddenly famous for a daring rescue in the Alps. What happens when passion is spent and what becomes of heroes is revealed in this terse and powerfully written novel.

Captain Cleve Connell arrives in Korea with a single goal: to become an ace, one of that elite fraternity of jet pilots who have downed five MIGs. But as his fellow airmen rack up kill after kill, Cleve's luck runs bad. Other pilots question his guts. And then in one icy instant 40,000 feet above the Yalu River, his luck changes forever.

Over the last century air travel has evolved from a high-risk experiment involving a few visionary pioneers to an efficient—and often irritating—means for distributing masses of people to the far reaches of the globe. During the hundred-year history of human air travel, it has yielded writing that is, by turns, heroic, dreamy, subversive, and utterly dire. This anthology traces this trajectory from the early letters and memoirs of Wilbur and Orville Wright, and Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, to the diaries of Amelia Earhart. Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s heroism gives way to the darkly magical storytelling of Roald Dahl, and the spare, elegiac prose of master stylist James Salter. More recent stories by Erica Jong, Mary Gaitskill, Thomas Beller, Mike Albo, Maxine Swann, and David Sedaris examine an array of contemporary subjects, from the addictiveness of mile-high sex, to etiquette for cramped seating and accounts of racial profiling post–9/11. Flight Patterns promises an entertaining refuge for frequent fliers, and a gateway to dreams for nighttime readers. These writings exude the primal fear and cool perspective that can only come from seeing the world—and one’s own life—from a great distance. Flight Patterns renders airplane travel a time capsule of modern life.

"Originally published by Harper & Brothers, 1956."--T.p. verso.

"Hver gang jeg er vendt tilbage til denne roman, bliver jeg oplyst, genopfyldt, forundret og rørt over Salters sproglige suverænitet." - John FordNedra og Viri Berlands ægteskab er stabilt og harmonisk. De har to smukke og opvakte børn, og de bor lige uden for New York City i et smagfuldt indrettet hus, der ligger helt ned til Hudsonfloden. Deres middagsselskaber er afslappede, og deres venner er spændende og kunstneriske. De dyrker freden på landet og livet i byen, og de drømmer begge om den store kulturrejse til Europa.Men Viri er også dybt optaget af Kaya, hans smukke kollega, som han har indledt et forhold til, og Nedra har længe haft en elsker, Jivan, deres nabo og bedste ven. Uhjælpeligt – og uden at ville det – banker de kiler ind i alle de små revner og sprækker i deres samliv, indtil der ikke længere er noget tilbage, der kan repareres."Det er en betagende bog. Der er en sarthed og en ømhed i den, en ømhed for børnene og de voksne, og en ømhed for sproget og livet i det hele taget. Bag en enkelt sætning åbner der sig hele store indsigter og erfaringer, menneskeligt såvel som stilistisk." - Ida JessenOM FORFATTERENJames Salter er født i New York i 1925. Han blev uddannet som jagerpilot fra West Point i 1945 og har fløjet over hundrede togter for the U.S. Army Airforce i de tolv år, han var ved militæ- ret. I 1957 udkom hans første roman, og siden har han levet af sit forfatterskab. James Salter bor med sin familiei Grandview ved Hudsonfloden, lidt nord for New York City, han har modtaget flere priser, heriblandt the PEN/ Faulkner Award og senest the Rea Award for the Short Story.OM BOGENLysår udkom første gang i 1975 og bidrog til James Salters ry som en af de bedst skrivende amerikanske forfattere. Men ligesom kollegaen Richard Yates blev han glemt af den store offentlighed, indtil de begge for nogle få år siden blev genopdaget og nu oversættes til alverdens sprog."James Salter er en forfatternes forfatter, der skriver mesterligt, og lige nu oplever en renæssance i hjemlandet USA med romaner som Lysår." - Berlingske"Det er en bog for læsere af rigtig god litteratur ... Forfatteren sammenlignes med Richard Yates og man kan drage paralleller til Revolutionary Road ... En moderne klassiker af en stor forfatter, der indeholder mange temaer til diskussion ..." - Bibliotekernes lektørudtalelse"Romanen er utrolig velskrevet og ærkeamerikansk ved at skildre livets forgængelighed i de tilsyneladende så lykkelige forstæder blandt oplyste mennesker." - Kristeligt Dagblad

Nedra og Viri Berlands ægteskab er stabilt og harmonisk. De har to smukke og opvakte børn, og de bor lige uden for New York City i et smagfuldt indrettet hus, der ligger helt ned til Hudsonfloden. Deres middagsselskaber er afslappede, og deres venner er spændende og kunstneriske. De dyrker freden på landet og livet i byen, og de drømmer begge om den store kulturrejse til Europa. Men Viri er også dybt optaget af Kaya, hans smukke kollega, som han har indledt et forhold til, og Nedra har længe haft en elsker, Jivan, deres nabo og bedste ven. Uhjælpeligt – og uden at ville det – banker de kiler ind i alle de små revner og sprækker i deres samliv, indtil der ikke længere er noget tilbage, der kan repareres.“Det er en betagende bog. Der er en sarthed og en ømhed i den, en ømhed for børnene og de voksne, og en ømhed for sproget og livet i det hele taget. Bag en enkelt sætning åbner der sig hele store indsigter og erfaringer, menneskeligt såvel som stilistisk.”Ida Jessen