Customer Reviews

Dusk and Other Stories: And Other Stories

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Ahhh. The wonders of James Salter. Elegant prose. An economical use of language. Powerful verbless sentences. Why is this writer not more acclaimed? If you have a passion for great literature, pick up a copy of "Dusk." It is a collection of short stories that leaves the reader with a feeling of melancholy, happiness, wonder, and, on some occasions, even tears. Salters paints a world where we, the privileged reader, can glimpse the inner lives of characters who are so fully realized, we seem to know them in a personal, almost private way. He paints landscapes of America, Europe, and in particular, France, with a vivid palette of emotions. Whether it's a man who hears a mysterious word in the middle of the night, and, in his search for a full understanding, appears to go mad. Or a look into an older woman's life as she comes to terms with age, love lost, and possibly, love found. Or, my favorite in this collection: "Foreign Shores." It recalls the experiences of a housekeeper, her young charge and a mysterious lover she meets at the beach. Salters is a genius of the English language. If you want to discover the true power that fine fiction can have on the soul, read James Salters' "Dusk."

I love the opening story of this collection "Am Strande von Tanger". From the opening scene setting sentences,"Barcelona at dawn. The hotels are dark. All the great avenues are pointing to the sea." To the last sentences which tie all together perfectly this story shows three lives mostly in the details and matter of fact happenings of a day trip to the sea. Nico is the central figure though and hers is the life we are focused on. We watch her struggle all through the story and realize she lacks what the others have, some connectedness to life or center, and she by stories end realizes it. As in many great short stories there is a key moment or epiphany where all in a moment is revealed to someone and that is the case in several of these stories. In "Twenty Minutes" a fallen rider has that much time to sum up her life. And in the title story "Dusk" a divorced womans loneliness is made all too poignant by Salters writing as the moment has come in her life that she realizes she will probably always be alone. Other memorable stories include a study of a film company which is told by the alternating voices of the players including scriptwriter, actor, actress, director, producer, and assistants. This stories kaliedoscope of voices is very fun to read as each player has a different take on what is going on in the production and each players personal insecurites effect that individual view of the overall picture. A very well crafted story that reminds one of a Fellini movie like La Dolca Vita in miniature where the sacred and profane compete for top billing. The military reunion story as well as the last story are forgettable. But "Foreign Shores" about a divorced woman's suspicions is a very good portrait of paranoia caused by suppressed personal anxieties. And the story "American Express", though about two unlikeable types who make a load of money and take a European tour together, is one of the better examples of gaining the world only to lose ones soul in the process(a film of this story will soon appear on PBS). Also three stories deal with failed artists, though each in a very distinct way. Hard to find a better collection than this.

Reading James Salter makes one appreciate the power of brevity, for his style is indeed terse and moving. Every word counts and every story abounds with a subtle grace. I quickly realized, after the first couple of stories, that Salter needs to be read in the morning when the brain is alert. Try reading him at night and you will quickly become lost in his quick changing of scenes, his sharp thrusts of dialogue, and his dexterous symbolism. I often had to re-read previous paragraphs for clarification. And when I thought Salter had erred in his writing, I realized instead that it was I who had erred in my reading.

Dusk won the prestigious Pen-Faulkner award in 1989. It is composed of eleven stories whose scenes take place in both national and foreign settings. If you love hard-boiled action scenes, don't read James Salter, for his stories are the opposite: subtle and meditative. The characters, well, they do a lot of thinking. They ponder during their times of loneliness and defeat. Displacement and malcontent consume their thoughts and for them the better days lie in the past, days when they weren't old or divorced or estranged. I felt like whispering in their ears, saying "Hey, it can't be all that bad. Take a Zoloft and you'll be fine." Highly recommended book.

I'm not sure where to begin with Salter. His felicity of style, his simple, yet simply luminous prose, his ability to expose ourselves without ripping away the veil, but rather to slowly and deftly unweave it, in a manner so mesmerising that you are entranced by the process, and only upon completion do you realise that the true rapture is the face, naked to your gaze.

He isn't afraid to say what he wants, and that can be a little shocking sometimes, to our politically-correct selves. Lines like "He was part of that great, unchanging order of those who live by their wages, whose world is unlit and do not realize what is above" may sound pretentious, but it feels like through reading his work, one is gaining access to that state of grace.

I could wax lyrical further -- and compare him to a pair of Rodin hands -- where there is the masterstroke from the distance, and the minutae that complete perfection. TO do so, would waste space. I simply exhort you to read him.

Also try Andre Dubus, if you are a short story person...

I feel well written short stories are exceptional, and with, "Dusk And Other Stories", Mr. James Salter again demonstrates that his skills are not diminished when the length of his stories are. Short stories are often complete thoughts or fully played out events, however fragmentary they may be. Others tend to stop. They end. You wonder why. Those in the latter group I tend to dislike as a reasonable ending, even if vague, does not seem to be a great deal to ask. Some that I have read simply stop because the idea stopped. Some find this stylish I find it weak.

Mr. Salter offers up the complete and the not so final in this book and they all are enjoyable. Even those that end abruptly like, "Am Strande von Tanger" feels less casually abrupt as the penultimate sentences or perhaps the paragraph brings closure. The remarks that are the final sentence seem less critical. In other stories like, "Dusk", the finality and completeness is almost brutal. The imagery of lost love and a dying bird in a field is poetic as writing and vicious as to the emotion it describes.

If you have read any of this Author's other work you may find bits of characters that you have encountered in the past, or similar locales they have transited. The familiarity real or imagined is welcomed as it brings back other great moments in this man's work. I have read 4 of his novels and this collection of short stories, all are excellent some more so than others. If you were looking for a new Author you would be hard pressed to find higher quality writing than this.

This guy is Hemingway with a heart. The sentences are economical. Each and every word has been picked like a particular tile in a mosaic. The metaphors are incredible, and he can mix his imagery to create magnificent parallels: women and animals, houses and museums. About twice per story, you'll stop at a line and just say, "Wow."

James Salter's use of our language is so brilliant and original, it inspires awe. In one brief turn of a phrase he is able to illuminate entire lives, and yet his words are simple and direct. These stories are like beautiful Chinese puzzle boxes, with a rich lustre that only hints at the intricate mechanisms hidden deep within. "Twenty Minutes" and "Akhilno" will break your heart; each says more in eight or nine pages than most novels. What can I say? This guy kicks ass!

James Salter writes with a detached, distant and pitiless eye stories unclouded by sentiment about individuals who experience life giving them a blow to the solar plexus that has negative, life-altering consequences. A man and woman own a bird that was once paired in a cage with a partner, and it dies upon the aimless couple having returned home from an alienating and offputting outing at a beach in Spain with a second female. A woman riding a horse suffers an accident where the horse falls on top of her after she is thrown, crushing her bones and leaving her alone in a field and near death. A woman discovers she's hired an unsavory and sexually perverse nanny for her small boy, only to discover after firing the young woman and losing her boyfriend perhaps as a consequence that this perverse woman may indeed have become a member of the class known as the rich and famous. Two men in love with the same woman and rivals, one older and one young, get suddenly dumped by her at the same time. A divorced woman, now at 46, discovers that her sexual life has reached dusk regarding her appeal with men. A wife and child awaken in the middle of the night to discover that Daddy has gone insane. Death comes suddenly and piteously to an old construction worker after he finished laying the foundation for a house, leaving very little behind him after all. It's as if everyone in these stories is living life lost on a foreign shore, though without actually realizing it -- until last minute or until the last 20 minutes of life -- before it is too late. It's as if James Salter wants to say to the reader that life shows every human being's life is worth dirt.

There is a kind of pity for the human condition that is expressed in this cooly and unblinkingly observant collection of 11 stories. This factor, matched with an elegance of language that feels austere, carved and sculpted, make for a memorable reading experience though the journey through the collection is sometimes jarring, jumpy, and even disappointing as very few of Salter's stories provide endings that are narratively satisfying or clear while the manner of the telling is kaleidoscopic and cut-up.

That the introduction to the collection is written by Philip Gourevitch does the story collection a disservice, I think. The introduction, for one, provides nothing essential or useful to the stories themselves or about the writer of them. But more importantly, Philip Gourevitch is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, a non-profit organization that has a political goal of global governance or one world goveranance. These stories by James Salter provide enough evidence of what a Europeanized American mind is (according to the mandates of the United Nations which recently came out with the ballsy and outrageous statement that the American mind needs to be more Europeanized). This introduction by Philip Gourevitch is like pushing a political hammer in front of the reader's face -- the hammer from the infamous insignia of the hammer & sickle -- albeit a "prestigious" one (perhaps). The introduction makes me concerned that James Salter's success with his collection in America is part of a larger conspiracy or agenda. As if art has never before been used to gain social and political goals of a nefarious nature!

James Salter rocks. The best literary novelist and short story writer of this generation. Stephen King describes a literary fiction writer as "someone who writes about extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances." That ain't Stephen, but it nails Salter. He is a man's man - I think of him as a Hemingway with style. If you want to fly through a story, don't read this book. Read slowly and savor the observations. Above all, read each story twice.

Pithy short stories. Salter not only has terse text but terse thoughts, leaving the reader to fill in crucial details of the story's fabric.