Customer Reviews

Gods of Tin: The Flying Years

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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?

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.

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."

Having read some for the works from which this book takes much of its content I was prepared to be disappointed; however, Salter has woven the material into a much tighter and stronger work. It's clear that he looked back at the old material with improved writing skills and a more mature handling of the nature of warfare in the early days of the jets.

He captures the isolation of these modern day knights of the air, the randomness of early aerial engagements in the first jet on jet conflict and one which was further complicated by the political restrictions which put the bases on the north side of the Yalu off limits. With the possible exception of the middle-east the Korean war probably marked the last engagement of large numbers of American aircraft in air to air combat over a small area.

Highly recommended, especially for those who who have enjoyed his other works. Deserves a place on the bookshelf between Stranger to The Ground, Night Flight, Tom Wolfe's writings on flight and other literate classics on the challenge and characters in flying.

For those wanting to know more about the why of the Korean air engagements Robert Cornan's "Boyd The Story of a Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Course of War" is most enlightening.

Like Wind, Sand and Stars the book has a very broad appeal that is not limited to pilots. Great gift for someone who appreciates good writing.

"Gods of Tin: The Flying Years", by James Salter, is the story of a man who flies the F-86 Sabre jet in combat over the skies of Korea. The back cover states the book is "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." Overall, I found the day-to-day, mission-to-mission portion of the book to be quite unremarkable. Being unfamiliar with Salter's other works, the second part of the book was lost on me.

The book is a compilation of excerpts from four other works by Salter. The writing style at some points appears to be what you would find in a personal diary. These sections are very terse and staccato, yet other sections of the book are a more flowing prose.

For readers looking for a better book on the day-to-day, mission-to-mission experiences, I highly recommend "Sabres over MiG Alley: The F-86 and the Battle for Air Superiority in Korea". This other book covers the technical aspects of the F-86 Sabre Jet, the concept of "MiG Sweeps", and biopics on the Korean War Aces. If you read only one book on Korean War aviation, "Sabres over MiG Alley" is a much better choice.

Gods of Tin is a book divided into three parts roughly equating to the authors various service assignments within the Air Force. The first section covers his time from enlistment to his flight training and onto the time where he was ready to ship out to Korea. The second part is a partial journal of his time (100 missions) spent flying F-86 fighters over North Korea and China during the Korean War and the third part details life as a pilot in the European theater during the cold war.

The author has a distinctive style of writing that gives you the feeling of being on his shoulder while the events are unfolding. There are short, brutal sentences while he is writing in the journal, which capture the time there wonderfully, as the time was spent living in short brutal bursts. His imagery is impossible to describe for us mere mortals and must be read to be appreciated. A sort of poetry in sentence form would be the closest I could come to a description that would do the author's writing any justice.

My only complaint, if it can be called one, is that the book is small, containing a mere 170 pages. I could have gone on reading this for days, and yet it was over so quickly.

If you want real literature without fiction, this is it.

Prentiss Davis
Truckee, CA

I can't really call Gods of Tin a biography but it fits sorta kinda but not really. The book is a compellation of Salter's writings either from a biography he wrote, to a journal he kept and two novels he wrote. The book was easy to read and I read it in one setting. It is the size of an inspirational book from Hallmark and about as deep as one of those self help books. Salter has a way with words but instead of saying anything insightful about his experiences or gaining an insight he had about those around him (his flight in Korea was made up of a who's who of the early Air Force) instead it was a self absorbed insight to Salter himself. Do we really need to know how much he paid to have sex in Tokyo? How does that help anyone that we now know he had sex with a Japanese prostitute during his leaves that cost him 5,000 Yen in 1952?

The editors/introducers of the book Jessica and William Benton wax on about Salter's prose (this may pass for literary criticism but as a Historian I want a more critical eye and some description of the History behind Salter and his experiences) but they ignore the criticism of his character in The Hunters of being an attack on the character of James Low a onetime Salter wingman and a nine kill ace. In the book Low does seem to get a nice treatment but I was left wondering was this the editors attempt to silence the potential controversy by selective publication or was this really Salter's opinion of Low. Whichever it was I found Gods of Tin not demonstrating any insight to Salter's experiences for a historical perspective or the editors showing anything but an unembarrassed adoring eye to Salter. I enjoy Salter's novel The Hunters but found myself after reading Gods of Tin feeling like I just ate at a very expensive popular restaurant. The food was good but but not great, the portions were too small and bland after being warmed over, and I left wondering why I even bothered.

I think if I were a fellow pilot I could better have appreciated Salter's memoir/musings. Some of this book was quite good but don't expect to learn a lot about the air war over Korea from this title. The author makes little effort to put his experiences in context or to explain any of his thoughts and emotions. That having been said, this short book is worthwhile reading as an account from someone who was there and especially for the insights into the thoughts of a fighter pilot in action.

An interestingly written window into one man's impressions of war as a fighter pilot in the Korean conflict.