AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES SALTER
An excerpt
by KEVIN RABALAIS
For decades, mere mention of the name James Salter has been a kind of secret literary handshake. He is one of the most highly respected contemporary American stylists but also a writer “who particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure,” as Susan Sontag wrote. A graduate of West Point, Salter served in the U.S. Air Force and flew more than one hundred combat missions during the Korean War, the subject for his first novel, The Hunters, published in 1956. After his second novel, The Arm of Flesh (revised in 2000 as Cassada), Salter left the military to write full-time. The novels that followed—A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years, and Solo Faces—are among those that Salter considers his best. He is also the author of the short-story collections Dusk and Last Night, as well as a book of travel writing, There and Then, and a memoir, Burning the Days. In 2000, Salter was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
I interviewed James Salter in New Orleans on November 9, 2010.
KR: In Burning the Days, you write about beginning your literary life while still in the air force and later on, when you were recalled: “I had three lives, one during the day, one at night, and the last in a drawer in my room in a small book of notes.” You’ve said that writing felt like a “queer thing to be doing” at that time but that something kept you going. What did you hope to achieve with The Hunters?
JS: I hoped that it would be published. And I hoped it would be well known but that the writer of it would be unknown. I had some ideal of anonymity at the time. Beyond that, I knew the novel was accurate and there was nothing written quite like it.