There and Then: The Travel Writing of James Salter

by James Salter

This is a collection of writing about one of James Salter's passions—travel. An exceptional companion with whom to share experiences, Salter hikes, skis, and climbs along the way, often with notable sportsman. Some of the pieces are brief and poignant, while others develop slowly and unfold with Salter's inimitable restrained elegance. All of them are infused with the skill of a novelist who just as astutely describes the sheer drop of a ski run as he does the façade of a château.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

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

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally speaking, I love travel essays. Some of the chapters of this book by James Salter are excellent, and some are not. There and Then: The Travel Writing of James Salter is mostly about Europe, with one very good article about Japan.

Unfortunately, there is too much about skiing in this book. I went to a college (Dartmouth) that owned its own ski slope, and I never bothered to take up the sport. (I couldn't afford it at the time.) Reading about skiing is, to me, super boring. Yet another essay on rock climbing is excellent.

All told, this is a book that runs the gamut from fair to excellent. You can leave out the schussing altogether.

[Liina · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag but his way with words saves even the reportages that I found a bit too dull and tour guide-ish. And like with his other essay collection - the ones that are good, are very very good. His travel musings evoke lost times - the times when people didn't use google maps to navigate or check hundreds of Instagram photos of their travel destination before taking off. A time with when people travelled with class, style and delicate attention, empathy and keen curiosity to their new surroundings.

[Jason Bergman · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who loves his fiction, that this book is excellent comes as no surprise. Places and faces here are similar to those in Salter's novels and memoirs, and most importantly, so is the prose. While not every essay is a triumph, this book is easy to recommend for any Salter completist.

[Allyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this much better than my last two reads of his.
This captures his beautiful matter of fact voice while detailing interesting places and times.
And they can be read one after another or savored over several weeks.

[Nathan Timoteo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Salter? As usual, good stuff

[Paul Jellinek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Salter is a great writer, and some of the pieces in here are up to par, but others are not--so on balance, three stars.

[Howard Mansfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

The attraction of this collection of travel writing is captured best by Richard Ford: "Brilliant. Sentence for sentence, Salter is the master."

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the last year and all its restrictions on movement might finally be getting to me: between this, an Evelyn Waugh book on travel, and John Steinbeck's "The Log from the Sea of Cortez" (currently lurking on my bookshelf, not yet added to my reading list but soon, very soon, it may very well be), I'm beginning to think I might enter a travel-book-phase in my reading this week. Alas, I can't afford to go to the places that many of these authors visit in my good-income years, much less "worldwide pandemic" years like last one and (most likely) 2021. But I can always read about travel, and have enjoyed doing so since the late, great Tony Bourdain's various travel shows for Travel Channel and CNN.

It's in that spirit of vicarious wanderlust that I picked up, started, and thoroughly enjoyed "There and Then," by James Salter. Having previously read two of his novels ("A Sport and a Pastime," which I plan to revisit soon, and "Light Years," which may also earn the re-read effort), I knew going in that I was about to read some delicious, beautiful prose, and I wasn't wrong. Salter writes these pieces about his journeys to Europe, Asia, and even to spots within our own borders (such as the skiing capital of Colorado, Aspen) with the same sort of measured, evocative prose that fuels his fiction. It's fair to say that you won't be reading these necessarily for tips on where to go and what touristy things to do in the various locales he visits, but you'll still enjoy reading about his efforts to sample the local culture and take in the sights. Salter is a worthy tour guide, and the pieces in this book are almost effortlessly charming in their attempts to tell you, the reader, what Salter thinks of a biking trip around one of the major Japanese islands, say, or what it's like to ski with a master of the sport.

Many of these pieces date from the Eighties, so there's a good chance a lot of the places he visits have changed since then (of course, that's true of a lot of travel writing, especially once tourists discover the hidden-away pleasures of a location that a travel writer first encounters). But the prose is the selling point, not the locations (though many of these pieces will make you yearn to see what he saw in Europe or Asia). Salter renders each story as more about the people he meets than the locations, though there is often an intimate interplay between the two that helps you understand why he was moved to write about these places and people in the first place. It's just a beautiful collection, over sooner than you want it to be.

[Franc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made a long rain delay in Schiphol Airport seem like an enjoyable journey. I huddled over it with a series of icy Heinekens, underlining great sentences. Of course when reading James Salter you have to raise the bar on what constitutes a great sentence so that 50% of the book isn’t underlined. (e.g. “Man occasionally makes something beautiful. God nearly always does.”)

The pieces in this collection seem effortless, as if they were scribbled in country inns over warming drinks. He explains the chooses his hotels based on the ring of their names. He describes charming European towns than no longer exist, not because they they’ve been altered by modernity and change, but because they only existed in this form in the eyes of James Salter.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many lovely pieces that mostly evoke a sense of place rather than delving into the why of travel. As with many collections, my main gripe is that the material was often redundant, with several essays on France followed by several on skiing, etc. Looking forward to digging into more Salter fiction...

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Salter is clearly a talented writer and thinker. But not all essays in this collection are created equal. I most enjoyed "Nothing to Declare," "Immortal Days," "Victory or Death," "Roads Seldom Travelled" and "Walking the Downs."

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful chapters to momentarily transport me to another place and time. I'm still a fan of Salter's writing after reading this.

[Bob Peru · Rating 5 out of 5]

the master.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a "gun for hire," James Salter's travel writing is still exquisitely crafted and laden with fun observations of Europe and so forth.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I was expecting something more like Paul Theroux rather than the ramblings in this book.

[Sarah Milstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal.

[Ami Boughter · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Perhaps always in travel, there is that idea of Jung’s, of something already imprinted on us for which we are unconsciously searching. Sometimes not so unconsciously."