Customer Reviews

Burning the Days: Recollection

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A colleague got me reading novels again after a long period by recommending "The Hunters." Not long afterward, I was reading "Solo Faces," stunned in both cases by Salter's crystal clear prose and the wrestling with themes of personal integrity. It has taken me a while to get round to his memoir "Burning the Days," which I found myself gulping down in two days and one long night of a holiday weekend. It has been a revelation.

Salter's novels are case studies of what I'd call male mythology. The heroes of "Hunters" and "Solo Faces" seem trapped in hyper gender roles, testing always both a kind of grace under pressure and an ability to endure physical and psychological extremes. "Burning the Days" turns out to be a celebration of those values, where to be a man is to embark on a long, lonely journey of proving that one is both like and better than other men.

The book is his own story of emerging from a fairly nondescript youth in New York to the life-transforming experience of West Point and a career as a pilot, along with the getting of a kind of worldly wisdom during times spent in Europe, especially Paris. His life as a writer introduces him to literary circles in New York and abroad and an international community of filmmakers and film stars.

Through it all, Salter focuses often on the men around him who earn his respect. He marvels at the particular integrity that makes each of them admirable. He elevates each of them into a kind of pantheon, and when all is said and done, he hopes that his own life warrants him a place among them. By contrast, the women who pass through his life are remarked upon for their beauty and intelligence, but beyond that they are walk-ons in this book about men. Readers may be taken by his old-fashioned glamorizing of women, or they may take exception to it.

Brilliantly written, the book is compelling for what it sets out to do - provide a remembrance of things past that not only captures moments and people in vivid detail but bathes them in a melancholy glow - like richly detailed sepia photographs.

I find it amusing to see how some people take this man's extraordinary lyrical gift for granted - as if prose poets of his caliber could be found in any issue of People magazine. Let's be clear about this: there is *no one* making more beautiful music with the magnificent instrument of the English language than James Salter. If this book were nothing more than a factual recounting of his life story, it would still be a greatly rewarding reading experience.

It is, in fact, a great deal more than that. Like Casanova's immortal memoir, this is the work of an old man looking back on the dazzling life he relished but which has vanished forever. As such, a funereal darkness lurks behind every sunlit memory, an abyss of ruin underneath every bejewelled sentence. There is a sad wisdom in these pages that makes "Burning the Days" a timeless classic, belonging to no one generation but to all.

The prose, as has already repeatedly been noted is wonderful. Much has been made of Slater's self-acknowledged unwillingness to reveal all the details. But much more is revealed in this book about Salter than the reader could ever hope for from a mass of minute details. In some crystalline passages, as clear as the view from his F-86, we see him thinking and his mediations on his own thinking and the prose turns to poetry: "Here among them, of what is one thinking? I cannot remember but probably of nothing, of flying itself, the imperishability of it, the brilliance." But he shows us the grayness as well as the dark and light of it. The struggling, the embarrassing ambition and jealousies, as well as the respect and the admirable. It is perhaps not a surprise that "Burning the Days" is so compelling -- it describes a very full and interesting life.

The first question I have about this book is where was Salter's wife when he was carrying on all the adulterous affairs he had? She is almost never mentioned. We do encounter, however, an incredibly interesting number of people, many of whom are famous: Robert Redford, Irwin Shaw, James Jones, Vanessa Redgrave, are only a few. And then there are the dazzling descriptions of the restaurants, hotels, residences and cities of Europe. The food that was eaten, the wine that was drunk, and the conversations had on literature, writing and film making. These are complimented by Salter's experiences as a pilot, flying in the States, Europe and across deserts in Africa. All of it, delivered in an often brilliant, dizzying prose.

There is no doubting James Salter lived an interesting life and drank from the lees more than most of us, and yet the one defect of this rich memoir is its morally flawed author. Salter seems to have not the slightest hesitation in sleeping with someone's wife or betraying his own wife for that matter. Adultery seems almost par for the course of being someone who is someone. Knowledge of women (many women), like knowledge of books and wines, seems almost a requirement to being cultured, to having truly lived. Which is perfectly acceptable, I suppose, if that's what you believe. But the problem is that the most emotionally honest part of this book comes when Salter briefly mentions the death of his daughter. The pain in his words stand in counterbalance to all the frivolity of his affairs throughout the book. And I found myself thinking that Salter would have done his daughter much better if he had never betrayed his wife, had never run off to Europe and other places for months at a time and sipped wine from golden goblets with genuises and moviestars. It's a consideration I believe Salter takes into account also.

The book succeeds because the author does not try to recapture the past (the days that he has burned away) or to ever justify his actions, but only the impressions that they have left him. And so if we are not given the whole picture, we are at least presented with a small part of the indelible proof of a life remembered, and the wisdom gained by having lived it.

I love Salter's fiction. After reading "Burning the Days", his autobiography (memoirs if your prefer), I'm not sure that I like the man - but the book review should have nothing to do with that personal opinion.

Salter's writing style is unusual. The syntax often makes one stop and reconstruct, thus stop and think. On rare occasions it's nonsensical. I particularly was annoyed with the confusion of general pronouns among mixed proper pronouns, the result being that I couldn't figure out who he was talking about. That said, his use of the language is superb. It's there in all of his work. And he's a wonderful "observer and describer" of people and things.

His life story is, of course, fascinating. Raised in privilege in NYC. West Point. Combat jet fighter pilot. Author. Director. Screeenwriter. Literary socialite. World traveler.

His singularly candid recounting of his years at West Point was excellent in quality and style. He gives West Point to us warts and all. And his internal struggles. Loathing it, living it, finally loving it.

The tales of flight are absolutely riveting. Nobody does it better. True storytelling that sometimes touches your heart, and sometimes raises your heartrate with the tension. In reading these memoirs I found that as I had suspected, his first novel, "The Hunters", was largely autobiographical. For me, this only adds to the greatness of that work.

The writing years seemed to be a little slower reading. At least for me. And I can't decide whether Salter was indulging in a little "name dropping". In any case, he travels in high company. He is loyal to and generous to his friends. Plenty of saucy tales, no vulgarity. Well done.

I do not share his love for Paris. Salter breathes it. Perhaps it rejected me, as Salter claims Rome rejected him. No matter - Salter is an accomplished individual, in a wordly way, and travels in circles far above the heads of most of us. He does not claim to be atheist, but his overtures toward God (or gods) are tenuous and ambiguous. As I wrote earlier, I'm not sure I like him - but I savour his work.

This is an unusual autobiography of rare quality. Generally, Salter presents himself as he often presents his fictional characters. If you've read any of his novels, you understand what I mean.

This autobiography is not for the People magazine crowd. It is thoughtful and broad in scope, spanning an accomplished man's life. I recommend it.

I've read the book twice. And after meeting the author briefly at a reading this weekend I've picked it up a third time. It seems new and better, and still crushes with a visceral weight. Read it again if you were unsure of it once.

I first read this book about a year ago and still occasionally pull it off the shelf and re-read a few pages. It feels like going for a ride in a twin-seater plane with an aerobatic pilot who is not showing off - he is enjoying the flight and welcomes you to follow along... one of the greatest autobiographies of this century.

I had a stange but gratifying experience a few months after reading BURNING THE DAYS. A street bookseller in Moscow recommended an autobiography of Yuri Nagibin - a recently deceased important Russian writer. His autobiography was so similar to Salter in style as well as many facts - of course the two never knew each other and wrote in different languages - the war, the women, the films, a happy marriage late in life ... it felt like an unexpected confirmation of Salter's existentialist truth.

BURNING THE DAYS is a great book, I envy those who'll be reading it for the first time.

Few writers today would appear to care as much about their craft as does James Salter. He is, for my money, one of finest American novelists of this century. Though I was left craving more self-revelation in these, his memoirs, I was consistently awed by his stunningly elegant prose and ability to conjure images of people and places past with such deftness. Reading "Burning the Days" one is haunted by the images of a truly brilliant writer who perhaps toyed with literary greatness but who, for whatever reason, never quite attained it. I suspect the restrospect of history will change that. If you care about fine writing and love to read it, James Salter is the best. --David Freed

You either burn the days or you're burned by them, I suppose--although at some point the wood becomes the fire, the fire the wood, and attempting a distinction is futile. That futility might be what we mean by aging, if we're lucky.

James Salter certainly has burned through his days, as this oddly structured, intensely lyrical memoir demonstrates. He's best known (properly) as the author of two of my favorite post-war novels--A Sport and a Pastime and Light Years. He wrote the screenplay for the icy, piercing Downhill Racer, one of Robert Redford's best films. Before becoming a writer, he graduated West Point and fought in the Korean War as an Air Force fighter pilot.

Also, to his credit, he embraced the post-war possibilities open to an American man: see (and rule) the world; educate yourself as a world citizen; help re-construct, if only by your love, Western Europe; and never cease to admire our country's incomparable landscapes and coincident opportunities.

By all appearances, Salter has known power--been close to it--but never allowed that closeness to ruin him as an artist. He evokes the circles of power, the famous faces, with their fantastic, distorted personalities, with intriguing delicacy. He's also had the good sense to fall in love a few times. Anyone who has picked up A Sport and a Pastime already knows how precisely, how lethally he records the burning choreography of love.

I don't know if it's still possible for an American man to burn the days as Salter did. There are obstacles on all sides--foremost among them our post-Reagan isolationism and moralistic fervor, our proud Crawford stupidity, our decadent laziness. Reading this book, I couldn't help but lament what we're becoming (which is probably another way of saying, What I'm becoming). This book allows us the secondary pleasure of envying Salter--which is an important pleasure, as it means that something essential is not yet forgotten.

Near the conclusion of this outstanding memoir, James Salter writes, "It is only in books that one finds perfection, only in books that it cannot be spoiled. Art, in a sense, is life brought to a standstill, rescued from time." Salter's "Burning the Days" will rescue you, as it did me. He chooses to call it a recollection, rather than a memoir. The book discards the usual rules of autobiography, skipping back and forth in time, often giving few clues as to time and place. That allows the reader to be swept up in the luminous writing, soaring through the air with Salter the pilot or sitting beside him in Paris. Like the best memoirs -- "Refuge" by Terry Tempest Williams comes to mind -- "Burning the Days" should be required reading for those who want to write, or to live.