The Hunters

by James Salter

With his stirring, rapturous first novel--originally published in 1956 --James Salter established himself as the most electrifying prose stylist since Hemingway. Four decades later, it is clear that he also fashioned the most enduring fiction ever about aerial warfare.

Captain Cleve Connell arrives in Korea with a single to become an ace, one of that elite fraternity of jet pilots who have downed five MIGs. But as his fellow airmen rack up kill after kill--sometimes under dubious circumstances--Cleve's luck runs bad. Other pilots question his guts. Cleve comes to question himself. And then in one icy instant 40,000 feet above the Yalu River, his luck changes forever. Filled with courage and despair, eerie beauty and corrosive rivalry, The Hunters is a landmark in the literature of war.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, War, Aviation, Novels, Literature, Military Fiction

233 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

James Salter (1925 - 2015) was a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Salter grew up in New York City and was a career officer and Air Force pilot until his mid-thirties, when the success of his first novel (The Hunters, 1957) led to a fulltime writing career. Salter’s potent, lyrical prose earned him acclaim from critics, readers, and fellow novelists. His novel A Sport and a Pastime (1967) was hailed by the New York Times as “nearly perfect as any American fiction.”

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Salter - image from JewishReviewOfBooks.com

Cleve arrives in Korea eager to join the ranks of pilot aces. He has the licks. The Hunters tells the tale of Cleve and other Korean War pilots, the small society in which they live, what they value, how they see themselves. Frustrations, seeking and achieving glory, or failing to be recognized for one’s accomplishments. It is a well-written war novel, very masculine. Salter (pen name, and later legal name of James Arnold Horowitz) knows something of the subject matter, having been a long-time (twelve years) officer and pilot in the US Air Force. He was serving in Europe and volunteered to go to Korea, where he flew over 100 missions. He ditched flying for a career in writing after this book was published and was warmly received. Females appear briefly, in service to the men mostly, with one notable exception. It’s pretty good stuff, and a fast read as well. Salter is considered one of the great American novelists.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

There is a lot in the Wiki on Salter - who passed away in 2015 at age 90

Fall 2013 - An amazing look at Salter’s body of work by Rich Cohen in Jewish Review of Books - The Hunter

Other Salter books I have read (far too few)
-----1975 - Light Years
-----1979 - Solo Faces

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Salter should be big. A lot bigger that he is. I'm talking about up there with the likes of Hemingway, Salinger, and Yates. Yes, that big. Nope, I haven't had a bang on the head or anything. Had one of those wrote this novel it would be huge.

The Hunters has all the ingredients of an American classic, and yet, has very poor reading numbers - at least when it comes to goodreads anyway. In fighter pilot and former World War II hero Captain Cleve Connell - a sort of Top Gun's Maverick of the Korean War but with less of a cocky swagger - we have a character that could be seen in the same light as some of America's most memorable protagonists from the second half of the 20th century. Salter knows how to write a sentence all right. He is one that can produce some beautifully stunning moments in only a few lines. There were passages of writing here that I went back over two to three times.

I didn't realise it's based on Salter's own US air force experiences, so that just goes to escalate the credibility of the many tense missions flown here even more. While Salter focuses mainly on Connell's 100 missions, and his aim to bag 5 MIG's that will see him certified as an ace, he pays just as much close attention to the camaraderie and rivalry between the pilots whilst they are on the ground. Very much a novel of courage, the physical and mental strain the pilots are put under, and that feeling of solitude up in the skies from where one may never return alive. Whilst the missions were no doubt riveting, it was the more downbeat and reflective moments where Salter really shines. Including when Cleve and another pilot take leave in Tokyo, and the feeling of tormented absence from not flying.

The novel was long out of print, and Penguin did a brilliant job with this particular reissue.
A solid 4/5, as when I think of Salter's achingly gorgeous Light Years, this wasn't quite as good.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

He can break your heart in a sentence. That's James Salter alright. I suppose a criticism of him might be that he cares more about sentences than story. But The Hunters has a more straightforward story than his other books. It focuses on a pilot named Cleve who in the Korean war has honed all his aspirations to one goal - becoming an ace. Early on during leave he has a chance encounter in a bar with a freshman. The man is behaving obnoxiously with a waitress. When this same man arrives in the squadron he will make Cleve's life hell. It's a masterful depiction of how one poisonous presence can turn a world upside down.

[Eric Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Hunters chastened prose is never more than a few steps from religious lyricism. Salter will begin a scene with the naming of parts, the spare poetry of function, and wind it up with an epiphany, or talk of grace, or comparison of a preternaturally skilled MIG driver to “a heavy angel come down to test the valor of men.” It makes me think of the abrupt gaudiness of nose art on a sleek aluminum fuselage.





The Hunters (1956, rev. ed. 1997) is Salter’s first novel, published the year he resigned from the Air Force, chose writing over flying. The 1958 movie, with Robert Mitchum starring, goes with a blond love interest (May Britt, the future Mrs. Sammy Davis Jr.) instead of the book’s Tokyo prostitutes, and tacks on a sequence in which Mitchum and the alcoholic husband of his love interest are shot down over North Korea; with pistols drawn, they must evade the Commie Hordes while Working Out Their Differences. That's pretty hilarious given the comparative inactivity, lulling routine and spacey contemplativeness of Salter’s novel. (The Hunters is the novel Joan Didion would have written, had she flown fighter jets in the Korean War.) I’ve read that the exacting Salter thinks Light Years (1975) his first fully achieved work; still, The Hunters more than brings the goods:

You lived and died alone, especially in fighters. Fighters. Somehow, despite everything, that word had not become sterile. You slipped into the hollow cockpit and strapped and plugged yourself into the machine. The canopy ground shut and sealed you off. Your oxygen, your very breath, you carried with you into the chilled vacuum, in a steel bottle. If you wanted to speak, you used the radio. You were as isolated as a deep-sea diver, only you went up, into nothing, instead of down. You were accompanied. They flew with you in heraldic patterns and fought alongside you, sometime skillfully, always at least two ships together, but they were really of no help. You were alone. At the end, there was no one you could touch. You could call out to them, as he had heard someone call out one day going down, a pitiful, pleading “Oh, Jesus!” but they could touch you not.

They flew with you in heraldic patterns...man I love that! I did not want this novel to end. I'm looking forward to his memoir Burning the Days, especially the Korean chapters, as well as to everything he's written that I've not read. Salter at the controls:

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excitement builds. I guarantee that you will be riveted by the novel’s end.

The author was a fighter pilot in the Korean War. Aerial combat and the reality of getting those five hits that make you an ace are what this book is about. It is about the competitive drive for success and how different men handle this.

Don’t think that a book about war need be uncritical of the military or even war itself.

This is not a book about politics or why the Korean War was fought. It is about the combat itself and the pilots who flew.

The characters are realistically drawn. Qualities one can admire and qualities that fill the reader with disgust.

The writing is strong and clear.

The audiobook narration by Joe Barrett is very good. His steady, smooth voice balances the tension that lies in the text. He does not overdramatize. I love how his voice personifies the respective officers’ rank and temperament.

The book can be read with both your heart and your head.

************

The Hunters 4 stars
A Sport and a Pastime 4 stars
Light Years 4 stars
All That Is 3 stars
Burning the Days: Recollection to read

[Fernando · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gran maestro de la brevedad y de la precisión. Pero sobre todo, maestro en el arte del silencio y de la fuerza de lo que se no se dice. Y es precisamente ahí en la complejidad y en la fuerzq lo no dicho donde tantas veces Salter navega con mayor soltura y pericia. Es un terreno obscuro donde nos perdemosfácilmente, pero donde nos encanta estar. No esperaba tanto de Los Cazadores, nunca pensé que su primera novela pudiera compararse a sus últimas. Pero me ha parecido, feliz e inesperadamente, una pequeña obra maestra. No solamente su belleza y originalidad desde el punto de vista estilistico, sino una trama trepidante y aleccionadora que es casi imposible de soltar una vez haz comenzado.

[Ana Cristina Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es una novela breve pero muy bien escrita, basada en la experiencia del autor como piloto de combate en Corea. Sabe de qué habla y sabe cómo contarlo.

[Nate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok I’m gonna say two things:
One, I got to stop reading books people recommend who think 100 years of solitude is the greatest book ever.
Two, I’ve read better fanfics than this novel.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1956, this book is about the experiences of American fighter pilots during the Korean War. The protagonist is Captain Cleve Connell. He is a skilled pilot, who has served with his Colonel in the past and is designated a Flight Leader. He interacts with a number of other pilots, a couple of whom claim credit for “kills” not actually achieved. It portrays the psychological and emotional pressures, the drive for excellence, and the toll these factors take on individuals embroiled in war. Themes include honor, loyalty, and the pursuit of glory.

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the plus side, it is beautifully written. I felt the intensity of the aerial dogfights. The characters are well-drawn and realistic. On the minus side, it is very slow in ramping up. It also felt a little dated in terms of its treatment of Asians and women. It is a little too “macho” for my taste, but overall, I enjoyed reading it. It was James Salter’s debut, which he based upon his own experiences as a fighter pilot during the Korean War.

[Daniel Villines · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's always satisfying to read stories that not only entertain, but also serve to highlight themes or subjects that reach out into real life. The Hunters satisfies.

At face value, Salter tells the story of jet fighter pilot who volunteers for a tour of duty during the Korean War. The ground story takes place at an Air Force base in South Korea where interceptor missions are flown routinely into the North to destroy North Korean fighter jets.

The story tells of a unique time in our history with fighter jets, when combat was done at close range with machine guns while traveling at hundreds of miles per hour; when locating and targeting the enemy was a visual process. Over-the-horizon radar and Sidewinder Missiles were still inventions of the future. The Americans flew the F-86 Sabre and the North Koreans flew Russian MIG-15s. Both aircraft were little more than WWII fighters adapted to withstand the forces of jet powered flight. Both aircraft were fairly evenly matched in their capabilities. This part of the story, the war story, is both entertaining and insightful with respect to the history that Salter brings to life.

Then there is the greater meaning that gradually takes shape as the story progresses. The Hunters is about success. It's about being the best of your peers. And if you think that success can be achieved through planning, training, or desire, then Salter writes this story to say otherwise.

Salter makes the point that success is often a product of chance; it's a roll of the dice. And for this reason, those that achieve success are not always the people best suited to it. Success also finds its way to those that want no part of it, and it is often denied to those that desire it most. Whether it's in everyday life or in a surreal theater of war, success cannot be controlled, anticipated, or willed to happen. Success, for the most part, is simply the proceeds (or the liability) of luck.

[Inge Janse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh man. Ik kon een tijd niet slapen door het einde. Dat alleen al is een teken van een bijzonder boek. Maar ook het geheel is prachtig. James Salter is een absolute baas als het op schrijven aankomt. Deze gast kan in een paar zinnen (en soms zelfs een paar woorden) als een literaire illusionist een hele wereld voor je ogen uit het niets creëren, om deze vervolgens weer net zo makkelijk te laten verdwijnen. Of het nou een landschap, een gevoel of een persoonlijkheid is: geef Salter een handvol letters, en het opblaasbeest is piep-piep-piep gehosseld.

De Korea-oorlog (om begrijpelijke redenen ook wel de vergeten oorlog genoemd, vanwege moordenden concurrentie met WO2 en Vietnam) werd opeens suuuper belangrijk voor me, terwijl dat hele land me tot voor dit boek helemaal gestolen kon worden (minus hun kernwapens, dat is wel een ding). Wat me daarbij vooral overviel, was (en is) die totale zinloosheid van oorlog. Mijn god, wat is dat een slecht idee zeg. Mannen links en mannen rechts proberen elkaar te vermoorden, om redenen die ze zelf niet begrijpen, zonder ook maar enig idee van wie die ander is, en aangestuurd door mensen die het ook allemaal geen ene fuck boeit en nul skin in the game hebben. Het ene moment is er oorlog, het andere moment is het voorbij, soms ben je heel even trots op wat je gedaan hebt, en vervolgens bleek ook dat weer een groot luchtkasteel van ijdelheid, narcisme en angst.

En in de schaduw daarvan is daar Steve, die maar als voetbal rondgetrapt wordt door schijnbare concurrenten, onmenselijke leidinggevenden, mysterieuze vrouwen, zijn onvervulbare ego, onleefbare weersomstandigheden en een totaal onduidelijk doel. Zelfs als hij zijn hoogste doel bereikt, blijkt het allemaal een nirwana. Je zou hem het liefst eens een knuffel willen geven (iets wat hij zelf ook graag zou willen). Arme Steve.

Maar het was niet voor niets, Steve! Want ik heb veel van je geleerd.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional prose for a war novel, very short at 200+ pages. The story is very tightly wound and stayed true all the way through.

The Hunters is the story of Captain Cleve Connell and his fellow American pilots hunting North Korean/Chinese MIGS during the Korean War. They were each to fly a hundred missions. Most missions are duds. The story then builds steam as Cleve who trained many of the fellow pilots in pilot school is finally deployed to the war zone. He is frustrated by his lack of enemy kills, even after 50 sorties, while junior pilots report multiple kills. He finds out that many pilots are exaggerating their prowess. One pilot, Pell, is promoted despite several of his wingmen dying due to his recklessness. The colonel loves Pell’s braggadocio though and Cleve’s protestations amount to little. Cleve has many missions left and the story gracefully heads to its climax. And the ending is fitting and beautifully drawn.

In summary, this book reminds me of the movie Top Gun and the great WWII sea novel Caine Mutiny. The only better book I have ever read about pilots is The Right Stuff.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most apolitical war novel I've ever read. No character reflects on the nature of war or his role in it, for better or worse. What they do reflect on, endlessly, obessively, is the competition for wracking up the most kills and attaining ace status. Think of Mamet's salesmen in "Glengarry, Glennross" gone to war. This lack of political dimension is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it creates a kind of claustrophobic insularity in mood and focus that enevelops the characters like a smothering fog, especially Cleve Connell, who almost never reveals anything about his personal life, his life before Korea, his hopes for life after Korea, or even if he will survive. Other than the rather cliche revelation that he comes from a family with history of military service, we learn little about his interior life. The guy doesn't even think of what he misses about life back home (and having served 2 1/2 years overseas in the Army, I can testify that soldiers, at least enlisted men, think of little else than home; but then, as I recall, officers with career ambitions were a different species altogether). But this void doesn't appear to be some odd homage to vintage Hemingway stoicism, which usually hints at unseen depths of character; Salter just doesn't give his character much depth, although he makes a stab in this direction through Cleve's platonic "affair" with a Japanese girl while on leave. But that development trickles off into irrelevance.
However, that narrow focus is also what give this short novel its power. Salter vividly captures the dangerous rivalries that infect the pilots, and at times the frustrated drive for accomplishment takes on the dread of an existential quest. But in the end, Salter is more interested in upholding the purity of dedication to mission than breaking open the cracks in that purity. Nothing wrong with that; just something one doesn't find too often in war Lit. Despite a few hints in that direction, Salter's vision is far removed from that of, say, Dino Buzzati's "The Tarter Steppe," a novel that exposes of the emptiness of military ambition with quiet devastation.
Despite all of these misgivings, let me emphasize that Salter is a good story-teller and marvelous, even breath-taking stylist -- with a rare combination of spareness and lyricism: “Toward the final test and winnowing they flew together, and though a man on the ground could neither see nor hear them, specks of metal moving through a prehistoric sky, contaminating an ocean of air with only their presence, electrifying the heavens. Cleve felt a distilled fulfillment. For these moments, no price could be too high.”

This passage captures both the strengths and flaws of this book: Salter's evocative prose and his protagonist's sturdy but narrow virtues.

Overall, I liked this book enough that at some point I might be tempted to read "Cassada," Salter's other novel about military pilots.

[Philippe Malzieu · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the triumph of "All that is" in France, L'olivier, the french editor decided to translate the first Slater's novel.
Just in time.
Salter is really a geant. In Japan, he will be considered as a "lived historical monument"
All his genius is in this first book.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much has already been said here about the precision of Salter's crisp, clean style. It's Hemingway over ice with a splash of bitters. If you love language, you will read every word. Much also has been said about this book as an accurate portrayal of flying and a great novel of warfare.

What I would add to all that is how "The Hunters" is a fascinating account of the dynamics within a group of highly trained men who engage in a high-risk occupation. The central character Cleve begins the novel as a well respected flyer, a cut above the rest, and admired by the less experienced men around him. Fiercely independent and reserved, he has a somewhat aloof personal style that makes him all the more respected and even idolized.

Enter a younger, hotshot flyer, brash and egotistical, the opposite of Cleve in every respect -- and, we are led to believe, somewhat less than honorable -- who quickly establishes himself as an equal to Cleve, determined to be seen by the commanding officers as superior. The rest of the novel is a psychological study of "grace under pressure" and the eventual failure of Cleve to maintain his position in this hierarchy of men, where the respect of others is the reason for being.

This drama of the individual against a closed social order that first praises and then abandons him is compelling from beginning to end. I recommend the book not only to readers looking for well-written accounts of air warfare. Its nuanced portrayal of the shifting dynamics among men in an all-male setting makes it excellent material for gender studies, as well. For another Salter book that picks up some of these same themes and writes about them just as eloquently, read his novel "Solo Faces."

[Javier Casado · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soy aficionado a la aeronáutica, y muy de vez en cuando leo libros sobre aviación. No he encontrado ninguno hasta ahora que supere el aprobado raspado, y la mayoría suspenden estrepitosamente. Había leído que éste era una excepción, una gran novela, una novela escrita de verdad por un escritor (aunque hubiera sido anteriormente piloto de caza), y no una de esas autobiografías de ases del aire que resultaban ser pésimos escritores...

Pues tampoco. Está bien escrito, eso sí, al contrario que el 99% de los libros del género. Pero no basta. Es aburrido. No me dice nada. Un libro que se supone que describe la guerra aérea sobre Corea, los emocionantes combates a muerte entre los F-86 norteamericanos y los Mig-15 soviéticos, y que al final resulta soso y aburrido,

Tiene un buen final, sí, un buen par de capítulos finales donde por fin aparece lo que has buscado a lo largo de todo el libro: algo de emoción, algo de descripción de combate aéreo, algo de aventura... Demasiado tarde, sin embargo, para vencer la sensación de haber leído un libro simplemente aburrido, por mucho que esté bien escrito y los personajes tengan fondo, que lo tienen.

Y a esa amarga sensación se une la traducción: no es mala en términos generales, en absoluto, pero un libro de este tipo requiere una labor de supervisión técnica. ¡Por favor, editoriales, aprended de una vez! Porque las traducciones de la jerga aeronáutica en este libro son una verdadera aberración, que hacen insufrible la lectura de determinados párrafos, y hasta incomprensible en muchos momentos.

Al final me pasé al original en inglés, aunque ya por curiosidad lo alternaba con la versión traducida, para comparar. Por eso confirmo que cuando no se habla de aviación, la traducción es buena... pero cuando los pilotos alzan el vuelo (o incluso cuando charlan en la cantina), el resultado es vomitivo.

Así, resulta que una escuela de "Flight and gunnery" se convierte en "vuelo y artillería". Vamos, que de ahí deben salir pilotos y oficiales de artillería, rara mezcla, ¿no? Pues no: gunnery se traduciría mejor por puntería, por tiro. En alguna otra frase se dice que cierto piloto es muy bueno en artillería. Vaya, pues no sé qué pinta volando. Ah, no, que quiere decir que tiene muy buena puntería... Hay que joderse...

¿Y qué decir cuando ve que sale aceite por la cubierta de proa? ¿Es que estamos navegando por los mares del sur y no me había dado cuenta, o qué? ¡Joder, que va en un avión, no en un barco! Pues no, en el original era "cowling"; la carena del motor, no la cubierta de proa, ni la amura de estribor.

Mucho menos aberrante, aunque impropio, es llamar "escolta" al "wingman", cuando en castellano se le denomina "punto". Pero reconozco que al menos en este caso la palabra elegida es ingluso más descriptiva para el lector no especializado que la correcta.

Es el único caso, no obstante. Porque luego resulta que van volando a 40.000 pies y alguien ve "vagones" por encima de ellos. Pues no, no hay trenes voladores (probablemente la traductora se ha confundido porque en otros casos sí se describen "trenes" de aviones, en fila, así que deduce que si hay trenes, por qué no va a haber vagones...): lo que el piloto ve son "bogies", o "contactos", en castellano.

Y así por decenas... Una tortura si entiendes del tema, y un resultado incomprensible en gran parte de los casos para el lector no especializado.

En resumen: un libro mal traducido que tampoco me parece bueno en el original, aunque esté bien escrito y tenga una buena última parte. 2,5 estrellitas como mucho, que redondeo a 3 porque al menos su autor sí sabe escribir, además de volar.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Hunters is James Salter's first novel. It was published in 1956 and is the third Salter novel I have read in the past thirteen months. As with the others it is a magnificent piece of writing. The novel's setting is the air war in Korea, c. 1950-53. Salter served in the USAF in Korea flying fighters so the hard sheen of authenticity permeates every page. The Hunters has a reputation among connoisseurs as one of the best novels of air combat. That fact, however, should not stop anyone with an interest in beautifully rendered literary fiction from reading it. What raises this novel above the majority of similarly themed novels is first, the quality of the writing and second, that there is not one cliched moment in the entire work. Salter's genius is to portray men engaged in the most risky of enterprises and illuminate their innermost thoughts in a manner that allows a reader the briefest of glimpses into their joys and fears .

The culture that they live and fight in is complete in every way:

“Being in a squadron was a digest of life. You were a child when you joined. There was endless opportunity, and everything was new. Gradually, almost unknowingly, the days of painful learning and delight were over; you achieved maturity; and then suddenly you were old, with new faces and relationships that were difficult to recognize rising up quickly all around you, until you found yourself existing practically unwelcome in the midst of them, with all the men you had known and lived with gone and the war little more than unsharable memories of things that had taken place long ago. It was like the last year of college, and the final examinations just over. Everybody was rushing to leave, many of them friends. Most of them you would never see again.”

These men who fly know that death is always near, always a possibility. Salter reveals an inner dialogue that, perhaps, makes sense of it all:

"On a warm day, and all alone, it was not easy to die. Death could be slighted or even ignored close by; but when the time came to meet it unexpectedly, no man could find it in himself not to cry silently or aloud for just one more reprieve to keep the world from ending.”

For anyone who has read the later Salter in works such asA Sport and a Pastime (1967) or 2013's All There Is reading The Hunters provides a fascinating glimpse into the raw talent that is being revealed in this, his first novel.

[Wai Zin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cleve is a respected pilot and when he join his unit, a top fighter group in Korea,there are high hopes about him. His group commander is sure he will do well and become an ace in no times. But after getting a MiG kill he never get another kill.

Pell is a new pilot. Young, ambitious, eager for glory and quite obnoxious. He is assigned to Cleve’s flight and their dislike each other. Pell care only about himself, he routinely abandon his leader to go after a kill. And he is undermining Cleve at every turns. But as his kills are raking up he has the group leader, another glory hunting Colonel on his side.

Even though this story is set at a F 86 Saber group during Korea war it is not about war, air battles and it not even about flying.

It is about Cleve’s inner feelings, his battle in his frustrated soul.

And it was excellently written. The ending will make you want to weep. But it was somewhat beautiful.


.
.
.

After further research I got the satisfaction of knowing the real life pilot who was model for Pell didn’t go far in his Air Force career and even though I don’t want to be sound judgmental, he showed his true color, a man without moral and character.

[P · Rating 1 out of 5]

Based on the ratings it has gotten at least, this has to be one of the most overrated books in human history. It's about an entitled jet fighter pilot during the Korean War. I was sure to call him "entitled" because half of the book is about his insecurities and, well, this is the best way to put it -- incessant whining. There isn't a single character that is remotely interesting. There isn't a plot or subplot that is remotely interesting. Even the dogfights in the air are utterly banal. Finally, the writer isn't good at writing. What do people see in this novel?Does anyone younger than the age of 50 actually like this book? I don't get it. It was awful, and on a number of occasions I even entertained the notion of quitting it, which I have only done a few times (for a book or a movie) in my entire life. (Of course, I ended up quitting another book less than a week later.) Terrible. I can't recommend this book to anyone or in any way.

2/10. (I figure anything below a 2/10 should be reserved for books I couldn't even bear to endure all the way through.)

[Frabe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Primo romanzo dell'autore, pubblicato nel 1956, basato sulla sua esperienza di pilota d'aereo nella guerra di Corea (1950-1953). Buona la forma narrativa, non ho apprezzato granché la sostanza, dominata dalla competizione tra piloti - con relativa ansia da prestazione - sul numero di aerei nemici abbattuti.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE HUNTERS is one of the more insular novels I’ve ever read., insular in that it’s almost entirely about the self-contained world of fighter pilots during the Korean War of the early l950’s. That forgotten war of 60 years ago involved the first air battles between the newly developed American F-86 jets and the Russian MIG’s. They were both in the air to support ground troops. At that time, missiles had not been developed so planes had to get close enough to machine gun and disable the enemy aircraft.

The novel centers around Cleve, an “old” (early 30’s) veteran fighter pilot who has an intense camaraderie with his fellow pilots. It’s a world of its own at 40,000 feet and one that is totally involving, if incomprehensible to outsiders. “Friends were always asking him why he stayed in, or telling him he was wasting himself. He had never been able to give an answer.”

It has to do with fulfilling himself. “In this war, he was more certain than ever, he would attain himself, as men do who venture past all that is known.” It is a test of bravery, it is the ultimate life-and-death sport, the sensation that mountain-climbers feel as well.

Another part of the answer is the loyalty that men feel toward one another, as with all soldiers in all wars. Soldiers have a job to do, their obligations are to one another, and abstract questions about the value of the war is not something they concern themselves with.

There are conflicts, though. “He was frequently conscious of not wanting to die. That was not the same as wanting to live. It was a black disease, a fixation that could ultimately corrode the soul.” If a man’s soul becomes “corroded” than he stops taking chances, mostly concerned about making it safely back to the base.

Taking chances, though, does not mean jeopardizing the lives of your fellows. It means using all of one’s knowledge and skill to shoot down enemy jets. Anyone who has shot down at least five jets becomes an “ace” and is held in the highest esteem. A brash young pilot, Pell, takes some irresponsible risks and does just that. When confronted by Cleve about risking the lives of others, he always has an excuse to justify his recklessness. His natural talent and skill is undeniable, though, and it impresses his superior officers.

He is a challenge to Cleve, especially since his record speaks for itself while Cleve’s successes are few, the lack of them mostly a matter of bad luck. “Bad luck” – not something that impresses anyone. “Pell confronted him with the unreality and diabolical force of a medieval play, the deathlike, grinning angel risen to claim the very souls of men.” Everyone, newcomers and veterans alike, are impressed with Pell’s ace status. But Cleve continues his missions. “It’s a sport. You belong to it. More than that. Finally, it becomes, I don’t know, a refuge. The sky is the godlike place. If you fly it alone it can be everything.”

There is another dimension to the novel as well, one any reader can sympathize with. Time passes, and it becomes harder for Cleve to make friends. They leave, few having his commitment to his craft, and most of them he will never see again. It’s a novel about aging and getting old as well as bravery and skill.

Only once does Cleve take a break from this world, a short leave in Tokyo where he talks at length with a young woman who could be a stand-in for the reader. He then returns to his warrior world, After 100 missions he will retire, his goals possibly unmet, but he continues to pursue them. Others obtain the fame that should be his. It’s a tragic view of continuing on even if life is unfair, one that is masterfully depicted by Salter.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating: 4.5 stars.

Friends on the outside were always asking why he stayed in [...] he had tried to find an answer sitting alone at dinner in the club filled with administrative majors and mothers talking about their children, but he never could. In his mind he carried Saturdays of flying, with the autumnal roar of crowds on the radio compass and the important stadiums thirty minutes apart and button-small, the wingmen like metallic arrows poised in the air above a continent, the last sunlight slanting through the ground haze, and cities of concrete moss; but never any reasonable reply. Or, sick of the stars and bored with speed on those nights in the great black sea, the surf of which was cities bubbling on the wave, listening to the others who were up, two unseen killers perhaps, calling themselves Butcher Red and seeking themselves in the darkness, he had tried to think of one—brief, understandable—but never could. It was a secret life, lived alone.

The prose is spare and clear, the characters vivid and real. Salter's descriptions of daily life in an operational squadron, the sense and feel of flying and aerial combat, are as authentic as anything I've read, and could only have been written by someone who had been there.

I flew F-15s from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s; though my fighter was far more advanced than the F-86s Salter flew during the Korean War, I was pleased to learn how little the basic experience has changed. Salter nails it: you may be leading a four-ship with three other pilots on your wing, but in your cockpit you are insulated and alone ... it is a secret life, difficult to explain, unlike any other.

When Salter's character Cleve Connell begins to obsess over kills ... the inevitable scoring of MiGs downed and damaged, the consequent favoring of pilots within a squadron ... thoughts on the morality of war and the reasons for fighting go out the window. In my experience, this is dead on: it is what every fighter pilot lives for. When Salter describes Pell, the wingman who abandons his lead time and again to go after kills in a rush to make ace, I recognized the type immediately, with a chill that went right down to my bones. Yes, there are pilots like that ... just exactly like that ... in every squadron. Fortunately they are rare.

Some compare Salter's writing to Hemingway's, but I think that's inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say that while Hemingway would have written this story differently, it is a story he would have written, elemental and true.

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is another author who mistakes profundity with self-seriousness in a similar vein as Cormac Friggin McCarthy. Salter however, does not plumb the depths of pretension to nearly the same low as that aforementioned Pulitzer prize-winning wanker.

My expectations were part of the problem here. It was stupid of me to wish for a a Catch-22-like narrative that uses irony and paradox to point out the absurdity of war. What was I thinking, that every book about war pilots was going to be another Catch-22? My bad. Or maybe I was also thinking it might be a serious but profound meditation on the effects of war on those who fight in it, like Remarque's A Time to Love and a Time to Die. Nope.

What we have in this book is a readable but insipid meditation on masculinity as viewed through the lens of the eternal pissing contest shared by fighter pilots trying to make ace by shooting down enough enemy aircraft. Although death is a part of the story, it never goes deeper than the pissing contest. If this was a first-person narrative, this theme would be difficult to criticize, because I'd be looking at the phenomenological aspects of a person's experience. But this was written in the third-person, leaving Salter in charge of telling us what's really important here. But all I got out of it was a meditation on boredom and competition. This could have been a book about mid-level professional office workers and achieved the same result.

I haven't entirely made up my mind about Salter. I think everyone should get a pass on their first novel if it sucks, and Salter himself as tried to distance himself from his first two works.

[Liina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Salter was a fighter pilot before he devoted his life to writing and this, his debut novel takes its inspiration from his own experience. I can't say that I was thrilled about the subject matter but I knew that Salter will deliver. I wasn't wrong.
His prose is crystal clear, masculine and has the quality of watching a grainy film - impossible to grasp but it will linger and linger, becoming a memory you don't analyze but that will live in your bloodstream and will make your body ache with nostalgia.
It is about captain Cleve Connell, US fighter pilot in the Korean war, and his drive to become one of the aces - the pilots who have downed at least five MIGs. He is unsuccessful. The majority of the story is about his struggles and inner securities and the petty games for validation in the rigorous system.
It is a novel that takes place in closed confinements on many levels. The camp the men are situated at or the lone and claustrophobic world of the cockpit. Yet it breaches over those limitations. There is the feeling of freedom, of the limitlessness of dreams and seeking the depth of complacency within yourself. The scenes that describe the feeling of loneliness when flying, being here nor there are just unforgettable. It is poetry in prose form.
The dialogue also, is compact and precise, the setting of atmosphere pitch-perfect. And besides all that, there is a plot that keeps you glued to the page. The steel birds, the raging masculinity and competitiveness, the blazing sunshine and anxiety of the next mission. Genius work. But I wouldn't have expected anything less of one of my most loved authors.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A war book where men are really men. Frighteningly believable. The two most familiar soldierly archetypes - the noble patriotic leader who rallies his troops to greatness; the greenhorn whose innocence and morality is earnestly tested - don't exist here. These are boys undone by real passions: by jealousy, pettiness, and greed, by braggadocio and selfishness, and most of all by thwarted victory, which they want to claim not for their country but for themselves. The penultimate chapter is nothing short of heartbreaking.

It's also a reminder that war, to the single man, is not epic and sprawling; it's small and dirty and hyper-focused. I can't think of another novelist who writes so well about flying.

[Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read and reread this book because my father was a fighter pilot in the Korean War about the same time. but a different squadron. Interesting to me who the suspects were as models for the characters, especially the ass Pell who was based on a real-life ass. Salter in Korea was using his real name, Horowitz and like the character, only had one Mig kill. Interesting he gave that character the surname of Korea's highest Ace, and that he awarded himself the honor of downing Casey Jones.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am enbarrassed that it took me so long to read this - but I didn't want to read another book about WWII. I was wrong. This is an amazing book.

[Pabgo · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first James Salter book. Great story of Korean era fighter pilots. Brought back memories of my aviator days, amd the squadrons I was assigned to.

[Scottnshana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am fascinated by MiG Alley. We have an airport in my hometown named after Colonel James Jabara, one of those F-86 aces that this novel describes so richly. I am also fascinated by John Boyd, who I regard as one of the greatest thinkers the U.S. Air Force ever produced, and many historians believe he collected many of his insights flying the Wingman position on these missions over the Yalu. Honestly, I didn't know this superb novel existed until it appeared on the Air Force Chief of Staff's 2012 Reading List, but I am pleased that via that medium it has resurfaced before a new generation of airmen. Most of the book is devoted to the time before, during, and after the missions, rather than the flying, and that's what makes it so accessible to such a wide audience. Salter effectively captures the paradox of traveling toward a deployment, when you can eat steak for dinner every night at waypoints in places like Japan and Germany, but it's hard to taste them through the apprehension and anticipation of waiting for your scheduled flight to the war. He also puts the reader in the command post, where the folks who aren't on the mission are gathered around the radios listening to the play-by-play of battle. From a personal standpoint, I have always found it difficult to describe the beauty I experienced sitting at a picnic table next to the flight line at Incirlik Airbase, watching an armada of jets taking off and coming home when we were executing Northern Watch, but Salter is able to convey that, too, as each day his protagonist steps outside during launch and recovery to count ships. I have no doubt that Salter served in Korea with at least one sociopath, because his portrayal of that personality is so spot-on; his observation that recognition is often misplaced is interwoven with this character, but reveals yet more authenticity in the work. To sum up, "The Hunters" is not an uplifting book. It does, however, examine leadership and how morale suffers when it is not practiced in a just manner. It is also a fine story about how people under pressure often reveal the best and worst in human nature. I like to think that this novel has provided me a better perspective on great men like Colonels Jabara and Boyd; it has certainly provided me some good reflection on leadership, loyalty, and life in the profession of arms.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this novel about fighter pilots during the Korean War in 1998 shortly after it was published in a revised edition. It was James Salter's debut novel about USAF fighter pilots during the Korean War, first published in 1956. It is one of the best of that breed that I have read. Salter himself was a fighter pilot with the rank of Captain who saw combat from February to August 1952. He kept a detailed diary of his tour and the novel closely follows a chronology of events he experienced as an F-86 Sabre pilot with the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, based at Kimpo Air Base, Korea.
Salter was 31 when he published the novel and made his protagonist, Captain Cleve Connell, the same age. He describes 31 as being "the end for him" as a fighter pilot: "...not too old, certainly; but it would not be long. His eyes weren't good enough any more. With an athlete, the legs failed first. With a fighter pilot, it was the eyes." Salter himself resigned from the Air Force soon after the publication of The Hunters to pursue an alternate passion, writing.
Salter's novel excels both with an excellent prose style and appealing storytelling that keeps the reader transfixed. I enjoyed this book tremendously and followed up by reading his memoir, Burning the Days.