Gods of Tin: The Flying Years [Hardcover]

James Salter (Author), Jessica Benton (Editor), William Benton (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2004

A singular life often circles around a singular moment, an occasion when one's life in the world is defined forever and the emotional vocabulary set. For the extraordinary writer James Salter—recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award—this moment was contained in the fighter planes over Korea where, during his young manhood, he flew more than one hundred missions. The editors have gathered selections and photographs from a journal Salter kept during the Korean War, published here for the first time, and assembled selections from two novels, The Hunters and Cassada, and from the author's celebrated memoir, Burning the Days. As commented in a brief introduction, "It is, as a record of the day-to-day, mission-to-mission life of a young fighter pilot, a remarkable document by any standard. But it provides as well a view into the 'crucible of a writer's beginnings, like pencil studies that precede a painting, in which the essential qualities of the artist's hand are unmistakable.'"

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A splendid thing in a small package is this flying book compiled from several earlier works of fiction (including the great novel of Korean War aviation, The Hunters) and memoir, and from Salter's journals. Salter graduated from West Point in 1945 and went straight into the Army Air Force, later the U.S. Air Force. His training was not always smooth—he once lost his way over Pennsylvania and crashed into a house in Massachusetts. But he survived to qualify in fighters and to fly a tour of duty (100 missions) in Korea in F-86s, shooting down one MiG. After the war Salter flew fighters in Europe before resigning from the air force to embark upon a distinguished literary career. The text has excerpts from The Hunters; another novel about the European years, Cassada; his previous memoir Burning the Days; and an unpublished diary from the Korean tour. Although it's sometimes difficult to tell whose voice one is hearing, all the voices have a superb command of the English language and vividly depict the sensations and human interactions involved in flying.
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From Booklist

Award-winning novelist Salter is a West Point graduate and was a pilot in the Korean War. The missions he flew over Korea form not only the basis of his fiction but also the foundation on which he built much of the rest of his life. This book, concerned with his flying years, draws from a journal he kept at the time, from the novels The Hunters (1956) and cassada (2000), and from his memoir Burning the Days (1997). The journal sections, in particular, amount to a jump back to a time and place largely forgotten except by those who were there; the whole book is valuable for that alone, though those interested in the genesis of Salter's writing will highly appreciate it. Above all, the book collocates some of the finest aviation writing of the twentieth century, otherwise hard to find, if not altogether out of print. Let us hope this book will inspire the reprinting of some of those from which it extracts. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (August 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159376006X
• ISBN-13: 978-1593760069
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #249,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #60 in Books > History > Military > Korean War

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sun, stars, water and clouds, October 7, 2004

By 

John Joss (Los Altos, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Gods of Tin: The Flying Years (Hardcover)

James Salter ranks among the finest writers in America, a stylist of extraordinary skill, and this new book about his F-86 flying experiences in Korea demonstrates his remarkable abilities.

However seeming simple the basic act, writing well is as difficult as flying well, and flows from a lifetime of patient, humble practice and learning. The precision with which Salter puts words together, and the pleasure and satisfaction a reader derives from assimilating those words, transcend the subject matter and move to the sublime. Salter is a master craftsman who works with a deceptive effortlessness that distills essence and emotion into forms that drive directly to the point. Every reader who likes great writing will enjoy this book and will learn from it not just about the subject matter but about the art of literary composition.

In other words, one need not be a pilot to enjoy Salter's work in this new book, assembled from material that is now half a century old. He does not clutter it up with unnecessary technicalities (flying jet fighters is complex). His book SOLO FACES (see my review) shows that he is a writer who can capture the heart of the matter and convey it to the reader's mind with lyrical literary skill.

The production values of this book deserve mention: Shoemaker/Hoard is a relatively small Press who obviously lavish meticulous attention on their work, and it shows.

Why "Sun, stars, water and clouds" as the title of this review? The words are taken from Salter's book, page 121, describing what the ancients claimed are the greatest things to be seen. What better place to see them than from a fighter cockpit?

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Feeling Of "The Same River Twice", March 24, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gods of Tin: The Flying Years (Hardcover)

Salter is a fine writer and an elegant stylist, with the ability to blend exquisite imagery and brute, violent action effortlessly, so that the reader feels transported into the situation he sets up.

This edition of excerpts from three previous books, however, leaves me with a "Rip Off" feeling. Why not just read the books the two editors have ripped this material out of?

The bonus I guess is the frank Korean War journal which has not been published.

In his declining years Faulkner published a similar book BIG WOODS, composed largely of excerpts from books still in print, given his imprimatur as a volume of hunting stories, and his publishers encouraged Faulkner's audience to think of it as a new book by virtue of its new juxtapositions. Now Salter is getting the Faulkner treatment. So be it, but don't expect all the readers to be happy about paying money once again to a speciality publisher for a lot of stories we heard just a few years back when Salter published BURNING THE DAYS (1997). He's great and all but he's no William Faulkner.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Collection, June 30, 2005

By 

ktrmes "ktrmes" (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gods of Tin: The Flying Years (Hardcover)

This was my introduction to James Salter and it was the book that made me interested in his writing. One of the wonderful aspects about Gods is not simply that it contains Salters wonderful writing, but also that the editors have managed to collect the best pasages from a number of his books. After reading Cassada, Burning the Days and the Hunters, I returned to this volume and found that nearly every one of my favorite passages on flying (achieving competence or learning "equitation" as he puts it at one point) from these books appears in Gods. And a bonus are the excerpts from Salter's jounals as a fighter jock driving F-86s in combat in Korea: these sometimes read like poetry leaving an image that has the feel of a Turner watercolor -- a couple of colorful strokes that still give a strong sense of the energy and paradoxically tranquility of moments flying. Originally in Burning: "I will never see it again or, just this way all that is below. Some joys exist in retrospect, but not this, the serenity, the cities shining in detailed splendor."