Cassada [Paperback]

James Salter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 18, 2001

James Salter returned to his second novel, The Arm of Flesh--not to revise it but to entirely rewrite it. The result is this great new work, Cassada.

The lives of officers in an Air Force squadron in occupied Europe encompass the contradictions of military experience and the men's response to a young newcomer, bright and ambitious, whose fate is to be an emblem of their own. In Cassada, Salter captures the strange comradeship of loneliness, trust, and alienation among military men ready to sacrifice all in the name of duty and pride.

After futile attempts at ordinary revision, Salter elected to begin with a blank page, to compose an entirely new novel based upon the characters and events of his second long unavailable novel, The Arm of Flesh. The result, Cassada, is a masterpiece, and the occasion of our hardcover edition was celebrated from coast to coast.

"That opening image of the two lost planes lingers throughout, evoking the dark, perilous stuff that aviators and pilot-scribes, from Saint-Exupéry and Richard Hillary to Hanna Reitsch, work in." --Paul West, The Washington Post Book World

"The air is thin in the heights through which Salter steers his characters, the prose moves at breakneck speed, and the book's emotional impact is devastating.... Cassada is a masterpiece, a book in which men wage an elemental battle for survival against invisible forces." --Mark Levine, Men's Journal

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Salter is one of the great writers about flying, and this short novel was revised, at the suggestion of Counterpoint editor Jack Shoemaker, from a book originally called The Arm of Flesh when it was first published nearly 40 years ago. (Salter's first novel, The Hunters, was also revised for republication three years ago.) It is set in Germany a few years after the war, when the U.S. Air Force was still maintaining airfields and flying practice sorties, and when bad weather, particularly heavy cloud and fog, could still cause problems at smaller landing fields. Cassada is a young lieutenant, sent to join the unit at the center of the story, who is determined to be a star in the target gunnery contests in which the pilots indulge, and who in the end is part of a disaster when he and a colleague fly too far and run out of fuel in heavy rain before they can land. Salter's subtle, understated prose has been justly praised, even if at times it hovers perilously close to Hemingway parody, and the best scenes here portray the tensions of the men on the ground as they wait for planes to land safely. Salter's feeling for weather and for the dark mysteries of solitary flight are exemplary, and it is only in the rather mundane scenes of family life on base and the barely hidden rivalries and jealousies that the book is less than compelling. It is certainly worth reading for the frequent pleasures of Salter's writing and for the originality of the setting, but it in no way compares with his brilliant A Sport and a Pastime and Light Years. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Especially since Dusk and Other Stories (1988), Salter's fiction has commanded considerable respect, and expectations should be high for this extensive rewriting of his second novel (originally published as The Arm of Flesh in 1961). Here he brings his deft, often spare prose to bear on the story of a group of air force pilots flying training missions in Europe during the cold war. The characters are sharply realized, especially through extended scenes of dialogue; their relationships, their failed or incomplete or squashed attempts at expression, are fully displayed. Salter's style and approach may engage readers not usually drawn to military stories, especially in the case of Cassada, who is "solitary and unboisterous . . . intelligent but not cerebral" and whose ambition leads to tragic consequences. As in most of Salter's fiction, there is seemingly simple but clearly controlled, accomplished prose to marvel at throughout: "It's silent and cold. He lies in bed aching, too ancient to move. Out there, somewhere, more silent still, in the matted grass the wreckages lie, blown apart in the darkness, wet as the ground." James O'Laughlin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (December 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582431868
• ISBN-13: 978-1582431864
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,459,210 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inside look at a 1950's Fighter Squadron, January 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Cassada (Hardcover)

"Cassada," is a re-write by James Salter, of his highly acclaimed 1961 novel, "The Arm of Flesh." I have always considered "The Arm of Flesh, " the best book I have ever read about the interpersonnal relationships within an Air Force Fighter Squadron, and I was a fighter pilot one for twenty years. Even though some major changes have been made in plot and some characters in "Cassada," the story still retains that ellusive element of putting you there, as a participant, or observer. The story opens with a missed approach to the home base in Germany, by two of the squadron aircraft in terrible weather conditions, and through beatufully paced flashbacks, the story fills in and unfolds to a gripping climax. If you enjoy reading about military aviation, I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you just enjoy superb writing, I still can't recommend this book highly enough. It is a winner!

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars dangerous reading, April 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Cassada (Hardcover)

Reading Salter is a high risk sport. Every sentence is a step into the unknown. Each one is a potential hazard. Whether he writes about flying fighter-jets, or about a marriage ("Light Years"), or an unforgettable lay ("A Sport and a Pastime"). One reason for this, and it makes Salter's writing inimitable, is that every sentence is perfect to the point where it seems to exist in a vacuum. Stepping from one to the other, you face nothingness. Maybe that's what people mean when they say that his writing is "ecstatic." Salter's sentences are objects of beauty. It still makes not one of them harmless. Some of them will stay with you forever. That's part of the risk. "Cassada" is a rewriting of an earlier novel (which I have not read). It's somewhat cinematic structure - juxtaposing tense chapters in which an avoidable disaster unremittingly unfolds, and chapters which proceed, in orderly chronological flash-backs, to tell about the hero's insertion into a fighter squadron, and to flesh out characters and relationships, firmly situates the book as a production of the Sixties. While the crisis itself seemingly develops out of external circumstances - the weather, materiel failure, multi-level goofing - its tragic outcome is set up in those flash-back chapters where Cassada, a perfectly decent sort, ambitious, umbrageous, a bit too refined, is given a hard time by his comrades and superiors, and most of all by Salter himself who, intent on not letting him acquire heroic dimension, puts him through one humiliating situation after another. The pettiness, triteness of the life of the squadron, the frailty of its members, conveyed serenely, pitilessly, à la Salter, make it clear that the book is not intent on a celebration of the human spirit. You won't find a shred of sentimentality here. Yet, in the unbelievably gripping last chapters, the ultimate little nudge which brings about the tragedy will come, not from the nastiness, but from the feelings of friendship and esteem, often unspoken, from the slight excess of loyalty which, at the moment of truth, they call forth. Love is the surest killer (the leitmotiv in Salter's work). When life or death is a matter of split second decisions, any human impulse is fatefully magnified - a point which flying is ideally suited to illustrate. None of the protagonists, or the investigating commission, is ever likely to know the true cause of the death of the Hero, nor how exactly it came to happen, but we do, and it makes the novel singularly satisfying. Because flying remains the emblematic human breakthrough of the 20th century, and because Salter is one of the century's masters of the language, "Cassada" cannot escape the fate of becoming a classic. For the pure ecstacy of the flying experience, though, you must read "Burning the Days," Salter's autobiography.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN EXTRAORDINARY GRIPPING NOVEL, May 17, 2001

By 

George Fulford (Mill Valley, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cassada (Hardcover)

I had never heard of James Salter... from the first page I knew I had made an investment of extraordinary value.

Yes, it's about flying, but more than that, it's about the people in and around the airplanes. Writing about a piece of aluminum with an engine in front of it will keep my attention for a page, and that's it, but with Salter we get a master story teller who gets behind the machinery and into the heart and soul of everyone involved.

It's almost scary, and its also a masterpiece.

I read it in one sitting, I couldn't put it down, and was emotionally drained by the last page.

There wasn't one scene, one sentence that didn't fell right on.

Now I hae to find out what else Salter has written, he's that good!