Doubly gripping tale

Press, 17 October 1987, Page 22

Doubly gripping tale

A Sport end a Pastime. By James Salter. Jonathan Cape/Book Rope, 1987.191 pp. $39.95. < d (Reviewed by Stan Darling) > James Salter's critically-acclaimed i third novel, first published to 1967 but . only now released in Britain, is r gripping fiction to more ways than : one. - ■ ’ . ■ I The two young lovers at the heart of the older narrator's story indulge i constantly to some of the most i detailed gripping, from various angles, in non-pornographlc fiction history -r and some of the most well-written. ’ “Remember that the life of this' world is but a sport and a pastime ...” says the Koran passage from which the book's title is taken. Introducing a Salter story in its 1984 fiction issue, “Esquire” magazine described this novel as “one of the great literary works of our day, a tour, de force of erotic realism.” Salter’s narrator, living in France, travels to a small village for the autumn and winter, staying in a house owned by American friends in Paris. His is a solitary existence, partly marked by daydreaming about a romantic interlude with a comely widow in the village. The author sets his scenes quickly with detailed but uncluttered passages. < He is obviously a man who keeps

notebooks and notices much. The narrator tries to enter “the secret life of France, Into which one cannot penetrate, , fee- life of photograph albums, undes, names of dogs that have died.” . - ' Like any writer, he keeps noting, imagining, taking things beyond what they an: “I ami thirty, Lam thirty-four

— the years turn dry. as leaves.” “None of this is true,” he says early on. “I've said Autun (the village), but it could easily have been Auxerre. i*m sure you’ll come, to realise that" By letting us to on fee tricks of the novelist's craft, he involves us more deeply in what he. is doing than many other writers. He says his characters, the young lovers, “become real through our envy, our devotion. Is it we who give them their majesty, their power which we could never possess ... One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them.” ?*'• Salter, born to 1925, spent 10 years to the UJ. Air Force before resigning to become a writer. His first hovel, to 1957, was “The Hunters,” a novel about fighter pilots to the Korean War. More recent novels, after “A Sport and a Pastime,” have been “Light Years” (society life to a New York state community) and "Solo Faces” (mountain climbing).