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Loading... All That Is (original 2013; edition 2013)by James Salter
Work InformationAll That Is by James Salter (2013)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is Salter's last novel, loosely centred around the life of Philip Bowman, a man who serves as a junior officer in the Pacific in the World War II navy and later becomes an editor for a New York publisher, thus obviously paralleling Salter's own life. It's an odd sort of novel, though, as Salter keeps telling us the detailed back-stories of new minor characters as though they were going to be the central characters of their own short stories, but then dropping them again before anything very important has happened to them. Mostly, all they get from their chapter in the limelight is a meal out, sometimes followed by a night of passion. Occasionally they get to come back later in the book, but rarely as more than an interesting coincidence. Salter also breaks off from storytelling from time to time to explain the Second World War, or England, or Lorca, or something else we already know about, or to complain that "gay" used to be such a useful little word. But he can probably be forgiven for that sort of thing, given that he was in his late eighties when this came out. Apart from that, it is a beautifully written book. Straight down the middle of the great tradition of American prose-writing of the 1920s and 30s. Lovely clear, plain sentences, dotted with sparkling bits of ornamentation where we least expect them: if Hemingway and Henry Miller had still been around in the 2010s, they would undoubtedly have approved. It's easy to see why Salter attracted such praise, but a bit more difficult to see what he's trying to do with this book. It just seems to be an endless succession of clever men jumping into bed with beautiful women, who seem to get steadily younger as the men get older. This book and its author were ill-served by all the hype that surrounded its publication - just a pleasant, episodic story-of-a-life. Ordinary writing, felt very old-fashioned, like a mid-list novel from the 50s. For a much better novel of this ilk, read William Boyd's ANY HUMAN HEART or Richard Yates' A SPECIAL PROVIDENCE.
...this novel casts the last four decades in a completely new light, not coda but overture. The brilliantly compressed stories in which life is lit by lightning flash, the humane memoir that generously exalts, more than anything, the lineaments of ordinary existence — it’s all here, subsumed and assimilated in the service of a work that manages to be both recognizable (no one but Salter could have written it) and yet strikingly original, vigorous proof that this literary lion is still very much on the prowl. Belongs to Publisher SeriesEmpúries Narrativa (456) AwardsDistinctions
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML: An extraordinary literary event, a major new novel by the PEN/Faulkner winner and acclaimed master: a sweeping, seductive, deeply moving story set in the years after World War II. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I've read other reviewers accusing this novel specifically, and sometimes Salter generally, of misogyny. And I can see it. His other novels I've read, which I did in fact like, are strongly male-centered points of view and they treat women as accessories, generally, and not always kindly. But this novel goes considerably further in its unflattering treatment of female characters, though the men often appear as assholes as well. I do find myself wondering if when he writes of a character he is succinctly describing his own attitude.
And I have to wonder why so many of the characters Salter creates here are said to be on their third marriage or so, even when the character only appears for a few pages and that information wouldn't seem all that important: Wells only exists for 3 pages. Hinds exists for one page.
There are plenty of other examples. What's with the compulsion to give so many characters so many spouses? To show how much you don't believe in things like commitment?
So then there's the ugliest chapter near the end, in which our protagonist, Philip Bowman, seduces the college aged daughter of a former lover who betrayed him, flies her to Paris with him, fucks her a few more times, then abandons her alone in a hotel room with no money.
Well, at least she's still fresh, thank God, even after the deflowering by an asshole decades older than she is. Shit.
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