| James Salter with Sumo_Sagaponack, New York, 1984 Photo by Nancy Crampton |
Remembering James Salter
JUNE 20, 2015 9:26 PM
by ABBY AGUIRRE
The first James Salter story that got me was “Twenty Minutes.” I don’t know how to describe its effect for those who haven’t read it except to say that it works on the reader much like Salter himself wrote, “slowly, exactingly and, by almost every critic’s estimation, beautifully,” as today’s Times obituary put it.
The story is about a divorced woman who gets thrown from her horse. It is set in Carbondale, Colorado, a small town 30 miles downvalley from Aspen, “downvalley” and “upvalley” being the directions that matter most in the land of 14,000-foot peaks.