- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Picador; New Ed edition (2 Mar 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 033044882X
- ISBN-13: 978-0330448826
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 405,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
As more and more reminiscences spill down the literary chute, it's clear that this trend is as strong as ever. The harvest has been a mixed one, of course. For every Frank McCourt or Mary Karr or Tobias Wolff, there seem to be a dozen score- settling memoirists, many of them less interested in understanding the past than sinking a hatchet into it. Now, however, another major contribution to the genre has appeared: James Salter's Burning the Days. This splendid autobiography had its inception in 1986, when the author wrote a trial-balloon recollection for Esquire, so he can hardly be accused of faddishness. But his book differs in another way from the current crop of memoirs, which often feature a forbidding gauntlet of familial or societal travails. Salter, contrarily, has led what many would consider a charmed life. Born an upper-middle-class "city child, pale, cared for, unaware", he attended West Point, served in the Korean War as a fighter pilot, and then seemingly ejected into a post-war period of undiluted glamour. To be sure, his early novels, such as The Hunters, failed to make Salter a household name. Still, he ran with literary lions like Irwin Shaw, drifted into the film business during the 1950s, and spent the next couple of decades jet-setting between New York, Paris, Rome and Aspen.
Salter puts the reader on notice from the very beginning that this will be a selective sort of recollection: "If you can think of life, for a moment, as a large house with a nursery, living and dining rooms, bedrooms, study, and so forth, all unfamiliar and bright, the chapters which follow are, in a way, like looking through the windows of this house.... At some windows you may wish to stay longer, but alas. As with any house, all within cannot be seen." What, then, are we privileged to see? Salter's airborne years account for perhaps a third of the book, and for this we should be grateful: no contemporary writer has made the experience more vivid or eerily palpable. There are brilliant evocations of New York, Rome and Paris, some of which rival the virtuosic scene-painting in the author's A Sport and a Pastime. More to the point, there are human beings, who tend to get semi-apotheosized by the sheer elegance of Salter's prose. ("I do not worship gods but I like to know they are there," he notes in his preface--although his portrait of, say, Irwin Shaw does seem to be propped up on a private altar.)
Salter's lofty romanticism can sometimes turn to gush. These blemishes are far outweighed, however, by the general splendour of the prose, which alternates Proustian extravagance with Hemingway-inspired economy. And even when the book flirts with frivolity, there is always the undertow of loss, of leave-taking. Many of the things that Salter describes are gone. In addition, he claims to have despoiled whatever remains by the very act of writing about it: "To write of someone thoroughly is to destroy them, use them up.... Things are captured and at the same time drained of life, never to shimmer or give back light again." No doubt his assertion has a grain of truth to it, at least for the author himself. But his loss is the reader's gain: most of what Salter has captured in Burning the Days remains alive and, frequently, luminous. --James Marcus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The Spectator
'Salter's real masterpiece.'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is beautifully written. He really is a great stylist. At times it is almost like poetry.
He has led a fascinating life as well. A fighter ace and a greatly respected author. There is a melancholy feel to this autobiography but it is never depressing.
He has led a fascinating life as well. A fighter ace and a greatly respected author. There is a melancholy feel to this autobiography but it is never depressing.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
SO MANY MORE PEOPLE NEED TO DISCOVER THIS AMERICAN AUTHOR.AN EX FIGHTER PILOT,JOURNALIST AND SCREENWRITER.
FEW MEN CAN HAVE LIVED SO MANY DIFFERENT LIVES IN POST WORLD WAR 2 EUROPE AND THE USA AND WRITTEN SO BEAUTIFULLY WHETHER ABOUT SEX,TRAVEL,FREINDSHIP, WAR ,MOUNTAINEERING ,SKIING AND THE ARTS.
"BURNING THE DAYS" REFLECTS HIS LIFE BUT ALSO PLEASE HUNT DOWN "THE LIGHT YEARS " A NOVEL AND "DUSK "A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES.
IF YOU LIKE FITZGERALD,HEMMINGWAY OR THE DESCRIPTIVE PROSE OF CHANDLER YOU WILL LOVE SALTER.....
FEW MEN CAN HAVE LIVED SO MANY DIFFERENT LIVES IN POST WORLD WAR 2 EUROPE AND THE USA AND WRITTEN SO BEAUTIFULLY WHETHER ABOUT SEX,TRAVEL,FREINDSHIP, WAR ,MOUNTAINEERING ,SKIING AND THE ARTS.
"BURNING THE DAYS" REFLECTS HIS LIFE BUT ALSO PLEASE HUNT DOWN "THE LIGHT YEARS " A NOVEL AND "DUSK "A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES.
IF YOU LIKE FITZGERALD,HEMMINGWAY OR THE DESCRIPTIVE PROSE OF CHANDLER YOU WILL LOVE SALTER.....
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I can think of no memoir quite like this: dazzling, perfect prose; a fascinating life recounted; emotionally honest. Questions asked about love, and longing, and loss; about life's purpose. Simply stunning.
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