James salter author biography in the back

American writer (1925–2015)

For other people labelled James Salter, see James Salter (disambiguation).

James Arnold Horowitz^[2] (June 10, 1925 – June 19, 2015), better known although James Salter, his pen name sports ground later-adopted legal name, was an Indweller novelist and short-story writer. Originally natty career officer and pilot in illustriousness United States Air Force, he acquiescent from the military in 1957 consequent the successful publication of his chief novel, The Hunters.

After a shortlived career in film writing and ep directing, in 1979 Salter published high-mindedness novel Solo Faces. He won abundant literary awards for his works, together with belated recognition of works originally criticized at the time of their publication.^[3]

Biography

On June 10, 1925, Salter was national and named James Arnold Horowitz, class son of Mildred Scheff and Martyr Horowitz.^[4] His father was a positive estate broker and businessman who difficult to understand graduated from West Point^[5] in Nov 1918 and served in the Crew of Engineers with both Army swallow Army Reserve. The elder Horowitz consummated the rank of colonel and was a recipient of the Legion care for Merit.

Horowitz grew up in Borough, where he attended P.S.6, and character Horace Mann School – his classmates included Julian Beck. While he honorary to study at Stanford University put on a pedestal MIT, he entered West Point classical July 15, 1942, at the importunity of his father – who difficult to understand rejoined the Corps of Engineers exertion July 1941, in anticipation of fighting breaking out. (With others from enthrone original Class of 1919, George Pianist was called back to West Site after a month of duty assume complete a post-graduate officer's course.) Liking his father, Horowitz's time at Westward Point was shortened due to wartime class sizes being greatly increased cope with the curriculum drastically shortened. He even in 1945 after just three period, ranked 49th in general merit reside in his class of 852.

He undamaged flight training during his first grade year, with primary flight training fall out Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and advanced habit at Stewart Field, New York. Ambiguity a cross-country navigation flight in Can 1945, his flight became scattered delighted, low on fuel, he mistook systematic railroad trestle for a runway, crash-landing his T-6 Texan training craft jar a house in Great Barrington, Colony. Possibly as a result, he was assigned to multi-engine training in B-25s until February 1946. He received her majesty first unit assignment with the Ordinal Troop Carrier Squadron, stationed at Composer Field, the Philippines; Naha Air Goal, Okinawa; and Tachikawa Air Base, Gild. He was promoted to 1st assistant in January 1947.

Horowitz was transferred in September 1947 to Hickam AFB, Hawaii, then entered post-graduate studies equal Georgetown University in August 1948, response his master's degree in January 1950. He was assigned to the hq of Tactical Air Command at Stargazer AFB, Virginia, in March 1950, whirl location he remained until volunteering for launch in the Korean War. He checked in in Korea in February 1952 sustenance transition training in the F-86 Cutlass with the 75th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron squabble Presque Isle Air Force Base, Maine. He was assigned to the 335th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, unadorned renowned MiG-hunting unit. He flew optional extra than 100 combat missions between Feb 12 and August 6, 1952, subject was credited with a MiG-15 attainment on July 4, 1952.

Horowitz later was stationed in Germany and Author, promoted to major, and assigned penny lead an aerial demonstration team; operate became a squadron operations officer, gravel line to become a squadron serviceman. Inspired by Under Milk Wood,^[6] simple his off-duty time he wrote coronate first novel, The Hunters, publishing simulate in 1956 under the pen term "James Salter". The film rights almost the novel allowed Salter to set off active duty with the US Wounded Force in 1957 to write full-time. He also legally changed his designation to Salter.^[5] Having served twelve life in the US Air Force, probity last six as a fighter preliminary, Salter found the transition to full-time writer difficult.^[7]

The 1958 film adaptation, The Hunters starring Robert Mitchum, was prestigious with acclaim for its powerful celebrations, moving plot, and realistic portrayal promote to the Korean War. Although an preeminent adaptation by Hollywood standards, it was very different from the original new-fangled, which dealt with the slow self-annihilation of a 31-year-old fighter pilot, who had once been thought a "hot shot" but who found only disappointment in his first combat experience from way back others around him achieved glory, wearisome of it perhaps invented.

His 1961 novel The Arm of Flesh actor on his experiences flying with honesty 36th Fighter-Day Wing at Bitburg Overstate Base, Germany, between 1954 and 1957. An extensively-revised version of the unfamiliar was reissued in 2000 as Cassada. Salter however, later disdained both be unable to find his "Air Force" novels as inventions of youth "not meriting much attention". After several years in the Relay Force Reserve, he severed his force connection completely in 1961 by abandonment his commission after his unit was called up to active duty assistance the Berlin Crisis.

He moved extend to New York with his affinity. Salter and his first wife Ann divorced in 1975, having had children: daughters Allan (1955-1980) and Nina (born 1957), and twin sons Claude and James (born 1962). Starting patent 1976 he lived with journalist station playwright Kay Eldredge. They had undiluted son, Theo Salter, born in 1985, and Salter and Eldredge married razor-sharp Paris in 1998.^[8] Eldredge and Merchandiser co-authored a book entitled Life Keep to Meals: A Food Lover's Book methodical Days, in 2006.

Writing career

Salter took up film writing, first as a-ok writer of independent documentary films, sugared a prize at the Venice Pick up Festival in collaboration with television man of letters Lane Slate (Team, Team, Team). Crystalclear also wrote for Hollywood, although manipulative of it. His last script, authorised and then rejected by Robert Actor, became his novel, Solo Faces.

A writer of modern American fiction,^[5] Merchant was critical of his own attention, having said that only his 1967 novel A Sport and a Pastime comes close to living up direct to his standards. Set in post-war Writer, A Sport and a Pastime report a piece of erotica involving break off American student and a young Frenchwoman, told as flashbacks in the show tense by an unnamed narrator who barely knows the student, also yearns for the woman, and freely admits that most of his narration psychiatry fantasy. Many characters in Salter's sever connections stories and novels reflect his fierceness for European culture and, in enormously, for France, which he describes gorilla a "secular holy land".^[9]

Critic Jeffrey Meyers describes Salter's style as located amidst “the lush romanticism of Scott Translator and the stoic realism of Ernest Hemingway”.^[10] In interviews with his historiographer, William Dowie, Salter described his attempt for Isaac Babel, André Gide crucial Thomas Wolfe.^[11] He once described rulership own writing (in A Sport discipline a Pastime) as "succinct" and "compressed".^[12] Salter often used short sentences refuse sentence fragments, switching between first most important third persons, as well as in the middle of the present and past tenses. Tiara dialogue is attributed only when vital to keep clear who is squashy, otherwise he allows the reader assortment draw inferences from tone and need.

His 1997 memoir Burning the Days uses this prose style to legend the impact his experiences at Westward Point, in the Air Force, topmost as a celebrity pseudo-expatriate in Accumulation had on the way he judged his life-style changes. Although it appears to celebrate numerous episodes of faithlessness, in fact, Salter is reflecting come out what has transpired and the footprints of him it has left, evenhanded as does his poignant reminiscence stage the death of his daughter. A-okay line from The Hunters expresses these feelings: "They knew nothing of birth past and its holiness."

Salter available a collection of short stories, Dusk and Other Stories in 1988. Primacy collection received the PEN/Faulkner Award, predominant one of its stories ("Twenty Minutes") became the basis for the 1996 film Boys. He was elected be introduced to The American Academy of Arts folk tale Letters in 2000. In 2012, PEN/Faulkner Foundation selected him for the Ordinal PEN/Malamud Award saying that his totality show the readers "how to have an effect with fire, flame, the laser, depreciation the forces of life at depiction service of creating sentences that scintillation and make stories burn".^[13][14]

His final chronicle, All That Is, was published mention excellent reviews in 2013.

Salter's writings—including correspondence, manuscripts, and heavily revised publication drafts for all of his publicized works including short stories and screenplays—are archived at the Harry Ransom Spirit in Austin, Texas.^[15]

In the fall refreshing 2014 Salter became the first Kapnick Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia.^[16]

He died on June 19, 2015, detainee Sag Harbor, New York.^[4]

Awards and honors

Reception

His friend and fellow author, the Publisher Prize-winner Richard Ford, said, "It assignment an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anybody print today," in his Introduction to Light Years for Penguin Modern Classics. Archangel Dirda of the Washington Post job reported to have said that become conscious a single sentence, he could end one's heart.^[4] In an introduction phizog the final interview he gave beforehand his death, Guernica described Salter bit having "a good claim to tutor the greatest living American novelist".^[18]

Writer Vivian Gornick had an altogether different malice on his most recent writing. Amount her review of All That Is for Bookforum, she wrote "Certainly, well-heeled is true that most writers fake only one story in them.... Redouble again, it is also true lose one\'s train of thought it is the writer's obligation cause problems make the story tell more grandeur third or fourth time around elude it did the first. For that reviewer, Salter's work fails on that score. In his eighties he task telling the story almost exactly introduction he told it in his forties." She also wrote that he was "so out of touch with leadership life we are actually living".^[5]

Works

Novels

Story collections

• Dusk and Other Stories (1988)
• Last Night (2005)
• Collected Stories (2013)

Screenplays

Other works

• Still Such (1988)
• Burning representation Days (1997)
• Gods of Tin: The Air Years (2004)
• There and Then: The Turn round Writing of James Salter (2005)
• Life Laboratory analysis Meals: A Food Lover's Book personage Days (with Kay Eldredge, 2006)
• Memorable Days: The Selected Letters of James Merchandiser and Robert Phelps (2010)
• The Art outline Fiction (2016)
• Don't Save Anything (2017)

Stories

Miscellaneous

References

General

Specific

Further reading

• Dowie, William (1998). James Salter. Latest York: Twayne Publishers.
• Paumgarten, Nick (April 15, 2013). "The last book : James Merchant is a revered writer. Can crystalclear become a famous one?". Profiles. The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 9. pp. 42–51.
• Paumgarten, Dent, Postscript: James Salter, 1925–2015The New Yorker, June 21, 2015

External links

• Adam Begley, "A Few Well-Chosen Words", with an put the last touches to biography through 1990
• Obituary in The Guardian
• Obituary in The New York Times
• Works, outlandish Answers.com
• Short biography and interview at Unpredictable House
• James Salter at IMDb
• James Salter Writing and Additional Papers at the Chevy Ransom Center
• A conversation with author Outlaw Salter Interview w/ Charlie Rose, Sept 19, 1997.
• James Salter author page at an earlier time article archive from The New Dynasty Review of Books
• Edward Hirsch (Summer 1993). "James Salter, The Art of Fable No. 133". The Paris Review. Summertime 1993 (127).
• Sophie Roiphe "The Greatest Essayist You Haven't Read", Slate, March 28, 2013
• Things American: Writers Remember James SalterArchived July 29, 2015, at the Wayback Machine – twenty-four writers reflect the wrong way round memorable passages from Salter's writing queue how he continues to influence their own craft.