A Sport and a Pastime
by James Salter
Farrer, Straus and Giroux
Copyright 1967, renewed 1995
185 pages
This is the fourth edition of the Baltimore Online Book Club. Many of you might be familiar with the group by now, but I will summarize for new members what we do. We are a group of six bibliophiles; we meet about every six weeks and discuss what we determine to be a good novel. (We often choose former winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.) After we meet, I put a review of the book online.
We announce the book for discussion six weeks or so in advance, so readers have time to read it along with us. Online members are invited to give their opinions in the comment section; if requested, we will respond to every one.
Next book for discussion: Peter Stephan Jungk's The Perfect American --or if you prefer to read it in the original German, as I have: der König von Amerika. It is a biographical novel about Walt Disney, that has received good reviews and has already been made into an opera by Philip Glass.We will meet next on May 8, 2014, and the review will be posted shortly thereafter.
We will proceed now to a review of James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime, which we discussed at the last meeting on April 3, 2014.
A SPORT AND A PASTIME
James Salter's novel has been widely read since its publication in the late sixties--every member of our group thought its popularity is well deserved, and that the book should be even more well known. In other words, we think it is a classic.
Since the book has been in existence for nearly fifty years; since the novel has been extensively reviewed--many reviews are online--I decided to discuss just two aspects of the work, the ones which impressed me the most. A plot summary can easily be found online. The novel is an erotic tale set in France; the lovers are an expatriate, upper-class American male, age 21, and a working-class French girl, age 18.
The two aspects of the novel I will now discuss are its use of language, and its innovative plot structure.
1. A POET IN PROSE
Salter uses imagery and metaphor brilliantly. Some of his descriptions rise to the level of prose poems, while functioning perfectly as narrative as well. Intense interest in the expression rather than in what is expressed is the purview of poets; most novelists are unable, or unwilling, to write poetically. Unlike James Joyce, whose wonderful musical use of language often obscures the meaning of his sentences, Salter's use of poetry is always subservient to narration. He is, of course, much less a virtuoso than was Joyce, and is also thus more easy to read. I will now present two examples of his poetic prose:
In the middle of the crowd is a girl with an African--I'm certain he's a student--in a cheap grey suit. They have their arms around each other. As they dance it's like a playing card revolving. The jack of spades vanishes slowly, the queen of diamonds is revealed. Their mouths come together in the dark.
--page 41
Notice the lovely use of the adverb "slowly" which indicates the erotic nature of their dancing, a fact which is more directly stated in the last line. Salter doesn't simply state this episode, he uses a simile which makes the dance scene all the more vivid. This picture stated in a few words is indeed worth a thousand. The book contains many fine examples of impressive imagery.
Here is an example of a paragraph which in my opinion surpasses many of the prose poems written today:
I stop for a paper in the bookstore. I know the old man there very well. The counter is near the window where the light catches him flat on, like a cabinet minister before breakfast. He's wearing a heavy sweater and a scarf. His cheeks are absolutely purple. He seems very mournful, but there is all the winter still to be survived. He no longer lives in years; he is down to seasons. Finally it will become single nights, each one perilous as a lunar journey. He hands me the change. His fingers are rough as wood.
--page 46
What an effective evocation of the terror of an isolated old age! Salter is a keen observer of things human. There is no Father Williams sentimentality here; the cold light exposes the truth of the old man's situation to himself and to the reader. "Like a cabinet minister before breakfast"--what a beautiful simile! The politician wants to be seen and heard only when he is ready for the cameras. Before breakfast he is like a wrinkled, sad pope without his fancy robes. One is reminded of tabloid photos of starlets without their makeup. Notice that the language is concrete and suggestive, which also reminds one of poetry. There is quite literally a winter to be survived; the phrase, however, also clearly suggests that the man is in the winter of his life. Everything will have to be given up until only isolated nights that provide no comfort remain. This is indeed a very effective, chilling depiction of how some of us will feel when we put the cheery AARP magazines down and look in the mirror.
2. A TECHNICAL TOUR DE FORCE
What is truly outstanding about the novel is not its language but its innovative structure. Salter solves with genius many of the difficulties authors of novels face. When a novel is recounted by a narrator, this can sometimes be limiting. For instance, how does one include important scenes in which the narrator isn't present? How can one blend effectively fiction and truth and thus indicate that our lives consist of a blend of each? How does one bring home the truth that what we believe to be accurate recollections of actual events are always distorted by the desires of our minds? And more down-to-earth--How can one fill a good deal of a book with scenes of explicit sex without a shred of sensationalism? Salter has solved all these problems with admirable dexterity.
The novel begins with a train ride from Paris to the village of Autun, these two locations are where much of the plot takes place. It is a vivid evocation of French countryside; Salter, who was a pilot during the Second World War, obviously knew France well. After the reader feels rooted in a specific area of France, he or she is jolted out of complacency by the following lines:
None of this is true. I've said Autun, but it could easily have been Auxerre. I'm sure you'll come to realize that, I am only putting down details which entered me, fragments that were able to part my flesh. It's s story of things that never existed although even the faintest doubt of that, the smallest possiblity, plunges everything into darkness.
--page 11
On one level, the author is making the story universal; it could have happened anywhere--anywhere in France, that is, or, after removal of the French references, truly anywhere. But there is another, far deeper level. The plot is told by a nameless narrator who is 34 years old. He is full of sexual desire that remains unsatisfied. . He fantasizes about a young woman who lives nearby. He never seems to make any progress with women, however; he is apparently too psychologically inhibited. There is no evidence in the book that he ever even talked with the women he adores. The circle of friends he frequents at one point teases him; they suspect he has a girl friend, although they just might simply having fun at his expense. Later, the woman he secretly loves marries a student. Like us, she probably never learned the narrator's name. What a pitiful state for a man to be in, a full two decades after the onset of puberty.
The narrator meets a young American, an apparent Don Juan. They travel to a club in Dijon where the young American, Philip Dean, meets a young French woman, Anne-Marie Costillait. (She is the queen of diamonds of the first quote.) Much of the rest of the novel depicts, without reserve, the many sexual encounters the two have. How does the narrator know all the details of their sex life? The "none of this is true" of the quote above is taken to a new level:
I am not telling the truth about Dean, I am inventing him. I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you most always remember that.
--page 79
The lurid details turn out to be a fiction in a work of fiction, namely the fantasies of a sex-starved lonely man imagining Dean doing the things with his girlfriend that he would like to do with the girl of his dreams. That is why there is hardly any conversation between the two lovers; that is why there is virtually no foreplay, only sex. The sexually inhabited narrator's imagination doesn't waste any time with incidentals.
A very interesting and effective literary device! It also skirts the clumsiness of having a narrator tell part of the story and having a so-called "omniscient narrator" relating other scenes in which the narrator is not present. The sex scenes turn out to be a movie written and directed by the narrator's mind. He might have gotten some details from Dean--they see each other often--but these would have only helped his imagination run wild.
The young man has nothing in common with the young woman; except for the frequent joining of their bodies, his mind remains virtually untouched. Yes, she wants to get married, Yes he wants to leave. Even these banal details--do they reflect the lovers' actual situation or how the narrator imagines it?
What is truth? What is fiction? The author hints that experience is always a combination of both, depending how a narrator--an internal or an external one--interprets events. Salter accomplishes this and more with astonishing understatement. If the narrator hadn't told us that he is making things up--and this he tells us in just a few sentences of the entire book--the reader might simply take the story at face value, The novel would still be entertaining, but much less memorable. It subtly asks the questions about life experiences that we must ask ourselves: Are our memories telling the truth? Are they giving us fiction? Are they storing a combination of both?
A very innovative novel, successful on multiple levels, and worth reading again and again!
by James Salter
Farrer, Straus and Giroux
Copyright 1967, renewed 1995
185 pages
This is the fourth edition of the Baltimore Online Book Club. Many of you might be familiar with the group by now, but I will summarize for new members what we do. We are a group of six bibliophiles; we meet about every six weeks and discuss what we determine to be a good novel. (We often choose former winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.) After we meet, I put a review of the book online.
We announce the book for discussion six weeks or so in advance, so readers have time to read it along with us. Online members are invited to give their opinions in the comment section; if requested, we will respond to every one.
Next book for discussion: Peter Stephan Jungk's The Perfect American --or if you prefer to read it in the original German, as I have: der König von Amerika. It is a biographical novel about Walt Disney, that has received good reviews and has already been made into an opera by Philip Glass.We will meet next on May 8, 2014, and the review will be posted shortly thereafter.
We will proceed now to a review of James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime, which we discussed at the last meeting on April 3, 2014.
A SPORT AND A PASTIME
James Salter's novel has been widely read since its publication in the late sixties--every member of our group thought its popularity is well deserved, and that the book should be even more well known. In other words, we think it is a classic.
Since the book has been in existence for nearly fifty years; since the novel has been extensively reviewed--many reviews are online--I decided to discuss just two aspects of the work, the ones which impressed me the most. A plot summary can easily be found online. The novel is an erotic tale set in France; the lovers are an expatriate, upper-class American male, age 21, and a working-class French girl, age 18.
The two aspects of the novel I will now discuss are its use of language, and its innovative plot structure.
1. A POET IN PROSE
Salter uses imagery and metaphor brilliantly. Some of his descriptions rise to the level of prose poems, while functioning perfectly as narrative as well. Intense interest in the expression rather than in what is expressed is the purview of poets; most novelists are unable, or unwilling, to write poetically. Unlike James Joyce, whose wonderful musical use of language often obscures the meaning of his sentences, Salter's use of poetry is always subservient to narration. He is, of course, much less a virtuoso than was Joyce, and is also thus more easy to read. I will now present two examples of his poetic prose:
In the middle of the crowd is a girl with an African--I'm certain he's a student--in a cheap grey suit. They have their arms around each other. As they dance it's like a playing card revolving. The jack of spades vanishes slowly, the queen of diamonds is revealed. Their mouths come together in the dark.
--page 41
Notice the lovely use of the adverb "slowly" which indicates the erotic nature of their dancing, a fact which is more directly stated in the last line. Salter doesn't simply state this episode, he uses a simile which makes the dance scene all the more vivid. This picture stated in a few words is indeed worth a thousand. The book contains many fine examples of impressive imagery.
Here is an example of a paragraph which in my opinion surpasses many of the prose poems written today:
I stop for a paper in the bookstore. I know the old man there very well. The counter is near the window where the light catches him flat on, like a cabinet minister before breakfast. He's wearing a heavy sweater and a scarf. His cheeks are absolutely purple. He seems very mournful, but there is all the winter still to be survived. He no longer lives in years; he is down to seasons. Finally it will become single nights, each one perilous as a lunar journey. He hands me the change. His fingers are rough as wood.
--page 46
What an effective evocation of the terror of an isolated old age! Salter is a keen observer of things human. There is no Father Williams sentimentality here; the cold light exposes the truth of the old man's situation to himself and to the reader. "Like a cabinet minister before breakfast"--what a beautiful simile! The politician wants to be seen and heard only when he is ready for the cameras. Before breakfast he is like a wrinkled, sad pope without his fancy robes. One is reminded of tabloid photos of starlets without their makeup. Notice that the language is concrete and suggestive, which also reminds one of poetry. There is quite literally a winter to be survived; the phrase, however, also clearly suggests that the man is in the winter of his life. Everything will have to be given up until only isolated nights that provide no comfort remain. This is indeed a very effective, chilling depiction of how some of us will feel when we put the cheery AARP magazines down and look in the mirror.
2. A TECHNICAL TOUR DE FORCE
What is truly outstanding about the novel is not its language but its innovative structure. Salter solves with genius many of the difficulties authors of novels face. When a novel is recounted by a narrator, this can sometimes be limiting. For instance, how does one include important scenes in which the narrator isn't present? How can one blend effectively fiction and truth and thus indicate that our lives consist of a blend of each? How does one bring home the truth that what we believe to be accurate recollections of actual events are always distorted by the desires of our minds? And more down-to-earth--How can one fill a good deal of a book with scenes of explicit sex without a shred of sensationalism? Salter has solved all these problems with admirable dexterity.
The novel begins with a train ride from Paris to the village of Autun, these two locations are where much of the plot takes place. It is a vivid evocation of French countryside; Salter, who was a pilot during the Second World War, obviously knew France well. After the reader feels rooted in a specific area of France, he or she is jolted out of complacency by the following lines:
None of this is true. I've said Autun, but it could easily have been Auxerre. I'm sure you'll come to realize that, I am only putting down details which entered me, fragments that were able to part my flesh. It's s story of things that never existed although even the faintest doubt of that, the smallest possiblity, plunges everything into darkness.
--page 11
On one level, the author is making the story universal; it could have happened anywhere--anywhere in France, that is, or, after removal of the French references, truly anywhere. But there is another, far deeper level. The plot is told by a nameless narrator who is 34 years old. He is full of sexual desire that remains unsatisfied. . He fantasizes about a young woman who lives nearby. He never seems to make any progress with women, however; he is apparently too psychologically inhibited. There is no evidence in the book that he ever even talked with the women he adores. The circle of friends he frequents at one point teases him; they suspect he has a girl friend, although they just might simply having fun at his expense. Later, the woman he secretly loves marries a student. Like us, she probably never learned the narrator's name. What a pitiful state for a man to be in, a full two decades after the onset of puberty.
The narrator meets a young American, an apparent Don Juan. They travel to a club in Dijon where the young American, Philip Dean, meets a young French woman, Anne-Marie Costillait. (She is the queen of diamonds of the first quote.) Much of the rest of the novel depicts, without reserve, the many sexual encounters the two have. How does the narrator know all the details of their sex life? The "none of this is true" of the quote above is taken to a new level:
I am not telling the truth about Dean, I am inventing him. I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you most always remember that.
--page 79
The lurid details turn out to be a fiction in a work of fiction, namely the fantasies of a sex-starved lonely man imagining Dean doing the things with his girlfriend that he would like to do with the girl of his dreams. That is why there is hardly any conversation between the two lovers; that is why there is virtually no foreplay, only sex. The sexually inhabited narrator's imagination doesn't waste any time with incidentals.
A very interesting and effective literary device! It also skirts the clumsiness of having a narrator tell part of the story and having a so-called "omniscient narrator" relating other scenes in which the narrator is not present. The sex scenes turn out to be a movie written and directed by the narrator's mind. He might have gotten some details from Dean--they see each other often--but these would have only helped his imagination run wild.
The young man has nothing in common with the young woman; except for the frequent joining of their bodies, his mind remains virtually untouched. Yes, she wants to get married, Yes he wants to leave. Even these banal details--do they reflect the lovers' actual situation or how the narrator imagines it?
What is truth? What is fiction? The author hints that experience is always a combination of both, depending how a narrator--an internal or an external one--interprets events. Salter accomplishes this and more with astonishing understatement. If the narrator hadn't told us that he is making things up--and this he tells us in just a few sentences of the entire book--the reader might simply take the story at face value, The novel would still be entertaining, but much less memorable. It subtly asks the questions about life experiences that we must ask ourselves: Are our memories telling the truth? Are they giving us fiction? Are they storing a combination of both?
A very innovative novel, successful on multiple levels, and worth reading again and again!
No comments:
Post a Comment