Welcome to the Book Show, a celebration of reading and writers.
I'm Joe Donio, an extraordinary literary event all that is as a major new novel by Penn
Faulkner winner and acclaimed master, James Salter. It is a sweeping, seductive, deeply moving
story set in the years after World War II. The book tells of Philip Bowman, who comes
home from World War II, and drifts into the world of New York publishing. It's a novel filled
with drinking and conversation that comes most to life as Bowman falls in and out of a
series of romantic liaisons. Romantic and haunting, all that is explores a life unfolding
on a world on the brink of great change. Salter's novels include The Hunters and a sport
and a pastime. He has also written screenplays, memoirs and stories. All that is is his first
novel in 30 years and it is an honor to welcome James Salter to this week's Book Show. Thank
you so much for being with us. What a great pleasure.
Thank you for inviting me.
As I say, the first novel in 30 years, you've been doing a lot obviously in between. How
long has the actual process of this book been in the works?
Well, I've been writing it probably for five or six years. It was the publisher of course,
Kenob, who thought, well, what should we say about this book? One thing definitely will
be interesting. It's been a long time since he, another novel of his appeared. Let's say
that let's emphasize that 30 years. Well, of course, that's appeared at the start of every
interview and every review of the book and that people say, well, why is it, did it take
30 years to write? Well, I mean these questions. Really, I might say that I had to wait a
little sufficient demand for a novel. But in fact, I was writing short stories. I wrote
a long memoir and autobiography and during that time it seemed it was time to turn to it.
That's all. Give us a sense of the impetus of the time, of just after the war and how you
came to it and wanted to begin the novel there. Well, I came to it very easily because it was
the heart of my life. I was say in my 20s at the end of the war, that period of course
remains vivid to me as all. I'm not going to say childhood, but early memories do. It
was a very emotional time for me, privately, personally. I got married at that time. I
had children. I wrote my first books. So it's at the heart of my life. It was not easy.
I mean, it was not difficult to turn back to it and write about it. And of course, the
book proceeds from there up until virtually modern times. It's indefinite. You don't
know whether the book ends really unless you're paying very careful attention in the 80s,
exactly, or maybe a little bit later. It doesn't dwell on that. I mean, there are levels
of life and levels of writing. This defines its own level in a way. It's an emotional story.
It's about an editor's emotional life, primarily, but not exclusively. We must read the book
to recognize that. I love the feeling of the book because there is a sense that this time
after the war, especially in publishing, was much more, I guess, for one of a better
term and more leisurely time than it is now. Well, they say there are 250,000 books published
every year now. This huge proliferation of books partly is due to e-books, partly due
to self-publishing, and partly due to many small and I presume unprofitable publishers.
So that this is a lot of books. That wasn't the case earlier. Books only came at that period
of time through publishers, generally through a limited number, relatively limited of legitimate
publishers, where it can opt today. And this publishing house looks like might be the ground floor
of an immense modern and difficult to define hospital or business. There are many, many people
quietly at work in pristine surroundings. It's not identifiable readily as being a publishing
house when you walked in. In the 1950s, 40s, 30s, a publishing house was what can I say. It looked
like a more literary business. It was much less formal. It was more familial. The publishing
houses were necessarily smaller. They might have a handful of editors, a publisher or two. Yes,
people involved in the actual production of books, but they're much cozier or fair. And people
look back now, nostalgically, I suppose, perhaps not really, truly as thinking that as a golden
age of publishing, I think it's the way you look back upon everything as being more or less
a golden age. I mean baseball, finding apartments in New York, life itself is being easier and more
personal in a way than it is today. And certainly, we think of the pace as being a more moderate
pace, a more human pace. You get that wonderful sense of writers sleeping on a couch in the hallway
and great writers working on a draft at a table that there is more of a, as you said, a more of a
familial setting than a corporate giant. Yeah. Well, of course there are such houses today still,
I suppose, but the big publishing houses are not like that now. And of course the big publishing
houses are generally owned by big corporations. Now, formally, they had private ownership. That is to say
a publisher or a publisher and a partner or a small group of people owned privately. So the business
was a little different. You can only imagine that the bottom line is far more important to a big
corporation than it would be to private owners who, of course, have to stay afloat, who have to
somehow make a profit. You can't publish books at a loss indefinitely, but they're on a different
schedule. In some cases, we know that the private publishers were able to wait and say that their
backlist, that's something we haven't talked about, the question of the backlist. Formerly, the
backlist was really the important part of publishing. Good books remained on the backlist and continued
to be sold. I think we have a more devouring culture now. The book has to sell. It's going to sell now.
It can sell if it's lucky a million copies. The temptation of selling a million copies and the
profits from a million copies are quite different from the business of publishing a good book.
I'm speaking generally speaking now of literary books, of having it sell modestly,
but having it continue to sell on your backlist for 20 years, maybe 25 years. That's a different
sort of consideration and a different sort of life. What kind of nurturing do you think you got
early on in your career during this post-war period as a writer that stayed with you in
Form Jew? Well, I'm afraid I didn't get any nurturing. I came to writing a little later. I was in my
30s. I came from the outside. I think it's well known that I was an officer in the Air Force before
that. So I didn't have literary friends or I didn't know the literary world of New York. I am in
New York or I've always thought of myself as being a New Yorker. I didn't know anybody in literary
circles. My first real, I would say, introduction or opportunity to know anything about that was
through the Paris Review, through George Plypton, who published a sport in the past on. That was
my third book and also published my first stories. Of course, it was very social as well as being
a literary person. There were his famous gatherings, parties, really. It is a part of New York.
Through that and through him, I gradually came to know people. He himself in a very odd way,
very off-handed arms length way, was encouraging and nurturing. And then fortunately, I began to have
some editors who took a personal interest in me. And it was a who really brought me along. Joe Fox
was one. Robert Gene was another. And my current editor at Cannes, Robyn Deser, has been enormously
and courage-ing and influential. As a career officer, as you mentioned in a pilot in the US
Air Force, and then giving up that profession in the late 1950s after the publication of
the Hunters, did you know at that point upon the completion of that novel that that is where you
wanted your life to go? You wanted to be a writer? Yes, that's true. I wanted to be a writer. I gave
up my commission and said, I am now a writer, but that's only what I said to become a writer,
took considerably longer than that. It wasn't until my third book, which I sported in the past time,
that I felt I had written something worthy of really talking about. I didn't talk about it,
but I had that feeling about it. That book remains today an important book for so many of us,
still in print, still in back west, obviously. And an important book for so many readers,
do you know what it was about that book that struck a chord with a greater public at least?
And even to get your seal of approval in the sense of doing something worthy?
On the surface, it is the book about passion, about desire, about sex, a very explicit book.
I believe essentially it's the purity of the writing that gives the book its privilege to
claim to be literature rather than just a book about youthful desire and the satisfaction of
desire. I believe it's a matter of language, but behind the language, of course, is what I feel is
the hand, finally the hand of a writer with some confidence, with some authority, I should say,
and to write anything good, really good, you must have that authority, it's a question of authority.
So that's what I think the qualities that particular book are.
How do you think you see that confidence come through in all that is?
We're very much in keeping with your writing, it is a different novel for you in a way, isn't it?
Yes, but the authority comes through in your choice, your choices of things, of what to say,
of how it's written, of what to leave out, of which way to go at certain points. I mean all that,
I don't know what to compare it to, I felt while I was writing it, suddenly I know how to do this.
And that's what it is, I mean, stepping onto the dance floor. If you really know how to dance,
it shows in your very posture and your very first movement. That's as if I'm boasting,
but I'm not really. The book is what it is, and I think it's evidence of that.
I heard you say in an interview, and that's a quote that I love, that people would keep
up coming up to you and talking about your sentences and the beauty of your sentences and how they
would underline them. And that in this book, you wanted to avoid that of having people underline
things, of paying close attention to the structure of the sentence and the words.
Well, we're talking about two books here. We were talking about a sport in the past time,
a moment ago, and I think you're referring to this book, all that is. Going back to his
board in the past time, I didn't attempt to do anything with the sentences, except to write them
without mediation to say exactly what I thought was true and should be said. A succeeding book,
Light Years, is written with a great deal of metaphor and is written out of a kind of romantic
and deeply affectionate memory. I was writing about people I knew and things that I had deep
emotional attachment to. I admired them. I loved them, and I wanted to describe it correctly.
So many people came to me regarding that book, Light Years, and said, oh, I loved it. So there
are lines in it. There are paragraphs. There are pages. I often saw copies of the book that readers
brought to have autographed. And looking at it, I could see pages turned down the corners of them.
And I thought, this is terrible. I'm writing a kind of poetic anthology here. And I'm becoming known
as a lyrical writer, as a kind of poet. That's not what I wanted. I think I've gone too far
in that direction. It may be a natural instinct, but you can reign in your instincts, which my very
well-befaults. And in writing this book, I thought I'm going to write a book that's necessarily
going to be taken as a summation, I think, regardless of my view of it. I don't want people
to pause and say, oh, that is so nicely written. Oh, that is so beautifully expressed.
And I made an effort to make my language a little simpler, a little leaner. And to not have that
happen, to not be distracted by the language in reading the book. I think every page should be a
pleasure to read. But I didn't want it to be a pleasure that halts you. And you say, oh, my,
oh, my, let me read that again. And while there are certainly, elegantly, beautifully written
sentences, there is often certain sentences in the book end with with very explicit language,
almost a jolt or a shock at the end. Well, what are you referring to? In there are certain
sentences in the book that end with very explicit language. That sort of take it to a beautiful
term and then they will give you a shock. They will give you a jolt. Well, we are in the
2000 or the 21st century here. I mean, one interviewer said to me, but there are some awful
words in here. I thought, my God, where have you been? What have you been reading? What have you
been listening to? But I'm curious as to whether that was done as a way to sort of take away from
that, the baguiling and key people from underlining, as it were, if that was a contrast issue.
Well, I think you write short sentences and long sentences to create an appealing rhythm to the reader.
And I think you write nice things and jolting things. And it's up to you as the writer to compose that.
So if they are too jolting, I mean, it's unpleasant to the reader. There should be enough in there
that is crescendo, so to speak, and enough that is merely melody. There are contrasts in the writing.
And part of the contrasts are, I think, what you're talking about are choice of words.
And some words seem abrupt and cause you to stop for a moment. Well, I mean, of course, that's
intentional. Is it proper? That is to say, does it work? Well, if it doesn't, I mean you've written
something that's not right, you've written something bad. It's in the fingers, so to speak, of the writer.
And it's also very much a part of the story and these characters and
and what we think of, in this case, Philip Bowman, it falls in line with that, with his life,
with the story that we are reading about him. Well, he's not an aggressive, he's not a transgressive
character. He's not somebody who shocks you like something he says or something he does well with
one exception in this book that I know is shocking, is too strong a word, but it's a
an abrupt surprise. Well, of course, it's meant to be. I'm not going to go into that
because that's part of the plot. And of course, listeners here haven't read the book.
I think the book is in what can I say, perfectly modern language, perhaps with a faint
with a very faint hint of the period which it covers. And that is to say, with a bitter nostalgia
and a bit of looking back. I was surprised. It wasn't until actually about two or three days ago,
as I was preparing for the interview. And so much that I have read about you, you were talking
about how so many interviewers focus on at the beginning of the conversation about it being 30 years
and this being your sixth novel. But by the same token so much, the term I always hear about you
is writer's writer over and over and over again. And I made the, I said, okay, well, I don't know what
that means. So I'm not going to bring it up. And then I was really fascinated that in the biography
that the publisher sent out, that they put a time and a place to it, whereas Salter became a
writer's writer in 1979 with the publication of the novel, Solo Faces. How do you look at that of
what that means and the term given that we're all readers, I guess? Well, look, the term is perfectly
ridiculous. And to say, I became whatever that is in 1979 is further stupidity. I was, I've
been what I've been from the beginning. Somebody wrote that somewhere and of course, due to
Flee, people copying other earlier criticism for years and years, keep repeating it.
I don't know what it means. It means that I am admired to some extent by other writers.
And of course, it's derogatory. It means hasn't sold that much.
There it is. I refuse it. I mean, I disdain it. But I can't seem to stamp it out. It's like, it's like fire ants.
When you look at your career and you think of what, and what you have accomplished in an artistic
sense, what are you proud of? Well, I like some of the books I've written.
That's all you can say as a writer. I mean, you can be proud of what you've done.
I don't think I haven't, I don't represent a school. And I haven't, I haven't written about
political or social changes in the country. I've, I've been interested in the aesthetic side of
writing. I read generally for pleasure, not for information. When I was young, I did read for
information. How to grown up, sacked. How do they do these things? What is the real? What is behind
these people? But I don't read for that now. And I don't write for it either. I, I read for the joy of
of the experience. And I try to write for that as well.
James Salter's new novel is All That Is It Is Published by Knaf. Mr. Salter, it's been an honor to
have you on the program. I thank you very much for spending time with us. Thank you.
We enjoy hearing from our listeners about the show. You can email us at book at wamc.org. You can
listen again to this or find past book shows at wamc.org. Sarah LeDude produces our program book
Marcus for next week and thanks for listening for the book show. I'm Joe Donneum.
