James Salter Knihy

James Salter's unforgettable memoir of passion, ambition, and what it means to become a writer

From his first published story in the Paris Review in 1968, James Salter's stories have been universally acclaimed. Including his two published collections, Dusk and Other Stories (1988) and Last Night (2005), and the previously uncollected 'Charisma', this volume contains over twenty short stories by one of the finest writers of our time. Concerning men and women in their most intimate moments, struggling with loss, desire, or the burden of memory, each indelible narrative in the Collected Stories is marked by James Salter's great literary grace, his ability to show the subtleties of a character or situation with precision, and his equally assured ability to command reversals of fortune or shocking revelations.

This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair. Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness—and then felt compelled to destroy it.

Now available in paperback, the long-awaited first collection of short stories by the author of A Sport and a Pastime.

" Last Night is a collection of stories about passion - by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating." In ten stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments. A book dealer faces the truth about his life - as it is and never will be again - when he is visited unexpectedly by his brash former girlfriend. A lonely married woman, after a disturbing encounter with a drunken poet at a dinner party, finds herself irresistibly drawn to his animal surrogate, a huge tawny-eyed dog. A lover of poetry must come to terms with his wife's request to give up what may be his most treasured relationship. And in the title story, a translator, tormented by an agonizing sense of inevitability, assists in his wife's suicide even as he performs a last betrayal.

Viri and Nedra Berland live a gilded life with their two daughters in upstate New York. But as the years roll by, the cracks in their marriage become crevasses. It seems that in testing the very limits of their happiness, Nedra and Vira are compelled to destroy it.

Vernon Rand, a mountaineer, abruptly leaves his job and wife to climb in the Alps. He and his friend Cabot attempt to scale the North Face of the Dru, but disaster strikes when Cabot falls and is left paralyzed. Rand struggles to accept this and dedicates himself to healing his friend, both physically and mentally.

The seductive classic that established Salter's reputation as one of the finest prose stylists of our time

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A New York Times Book Review Notable Book An NPR "Great Reads" Book All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change. Philip Bowman returns to America from the battlefields of Okinawa and finds success in the competetive world of publishing in postwar New York—yet what he most desires, and what eludes him, is love. Here is PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter's dazzling, sometimes devastating portrait of love and ambition, a fiercely intimate account of the great shocks and grand pleasures of being alive.

In this anthology, 26 writers illuminate the motivations at the heart of their creative lives in original essays that are as surprising and varied as their fiction. The contributors include Pat Conroy, Norman Mailor, Rick Moody and David Foster Wallace.