Bøker av James Salter

I det vakre huset ved Hudson-elven ikke langt fra New York City, bor Nedra og Viri med sine to barn, hund og ponni. De er paret som alle misunner. Middagsselskapene er intime og festlige, vennene er spennende og kunstneriske. Idyllen er komplett, så hvorfor taper det lysende livet mer og mer av stråleglansen? Det er et godt ekteskap, men samtidig et mindre godt ekteskap og plutselig er det intet ekteskap. Deretter følger vi Nedra og Viri hver for seg. James Salter er opptatt av nyansene i det indre, tette livet mennesker imellom. «Salter er - ordets dypeste forstand - en mesterlig forfatter» Arne Hugo Stølan, VG

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.

James Salter skrev «All that is» i 2013, i en alder av 87 år. Alt som er tar kraftfulle tak i det som former, driver, henfører, forvirrer og fortviler oss - og som gir oss de dypeste gleder, nemlig våre nære relasjoner. Vi møter Philip Bowman på broen på et krigsskip i japanske farvann mot slutten av andre verdenskrig, og følger ham gjennom de neste førti årene. Sett med Salters skarpe blikk skildres Bowmans livsreise, der vennskap, lidenskap og skuffelser passerer: «Han elsket henne ikke bare for det hun var, men hva hun kunne bli[». Hvem er han egentlig, denne Bowman? Liker vi ham eller liker vi ham ikke? Synes vi synd på ham eller er det til pass for ham når han snubler i sine valg eller ikke-valg...? Hva er det Salter egentlig ønsker å fortelle oss? At livet, når det kommer til stykket, ikke dreier seg om mer enn sex og god mat? Og litterære perler, som forleggeren Philip Bowman ville ha tilføyd?

Er du her ennå? er en fascinerende og urovekkende novellesamling. Det handler om flammende følelser som holdes tilbake, om fordømmelse, forulemping og bedrag. Salter har virkelig spisset blyanten og berører det store spørsmålet om hvorfor det ofte er slik at vi behandler de vi er aller mest glad i og avhengig av, på måter som i hvert fall leseren av disse novellene vil tenke nøye over - og kanskje bli streifet av en dose skam. «Livet er et følelsesmessig kaos og ingen portretterer dette kaoset bedre enn James Salter ... Det er vanskelig å velge seg en favorittnovelle i dette kaoset.» --The New York Times Book Review «Glitrende skrivekunst av en betydningsfull forfatter ... Alle novellene i denne samlingen byr på James Salters utsøkte prosa, talentet han har for elegante skift mellom hvem som betrakter og ytrer og hvordan han, med kun en liten detalj, er i stand til å karakterisere den det gjelder.» -- The Washington Post Book World

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

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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