Collected Stories

by James Salter

Collected Stories

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, The United States Of America, Literature, American

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

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

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first few stories in this collection are absolutely ravishing. Sexual politics play a big part. No one stays happily married for long in James Salter's world. Men always have a roving eye and are usually willing to act on their appetite for something new, something younger. Women too are sometimes predatory. More often though they are sentimental and victims of the male craving to update to a more tight-skinned model. In a nutshell, he's not politically correct as a writer. There were times when his depictions of women made me uncomfortable. But it's not so much the subject matter of Salter's stories that makes him such a compelling writer as the beauty and wisdom of his writing. He's a fantastic stylist. And with one seemingly effortless stroke of his pen he can make you see the familiar with new depths of meaning.

There are duds in this collection, as usual in short story collections strategically inserted towards the end. So, as was the case with Lauren Groff's Florida, I began to forget how brilliant the opening stories were as I reached the home stretch. However, I've just begun Sport and Pastime and it's so brilliant that he has become one of my favourite writers.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the time I read this (7 years ago now) I didn't know James Salter (1925-2015) at all. It was one of the rare occasions I bought a book, just by reading the blurb on the back. And for once, I was not disappointed. Salter's writing style is very detached, soberly describing and also a bit cinematographic. It is striking almost all his main characters are women (whilst his biography seems to suggest some masochistic attitude). Salter is a master in describing or suggesting feelings that remain unspoken: often melancholy, regret of missed chances, a sense of the futility of life. All this you can find in the 8-page story 'Dusk', really a very strong piece of writing. Not everything was of the same level, of course, but there were several gems in this book. Afterwards I read more by Salter and was blown away by Light Years. Very recommended!

[Liina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aching brilliance.

[La Librería de Íñigo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nos voy a engañar: no soy nada fan del compendio de relatos. Las historias cortas nunca han sido fuente de mi devoción, porque a uno no le da tiempo a Empaty zar con casi nadie casi nunca. Esto de leer historias independientes unas de otras, sin hilo, conductor, no es algo que me guste demasiado. Esto es básicamente los cuentos de Salte; Esta recopilación, es de eso.

Además, tengo que admitir que no me leído todos. Había algunos que directamente empezaba y si no me enganchaba pasaba al siguiente.

Pero le doy cuatro estrellas por dos razones: la primera de todas es porque Salter nos ofrece una prosa espectacularmente, bien trabajada, la construcción de sus personajes es bellísima, y su narración de las conversaciones, es decir, los diálogos son crudos como la vida misma. Y la segunda razón por un cuento muy concreto: Bangkok. ¡ Qué pedazo de relato! No he visto a nadie que pudiese condensar en tan poquitas líneas, en tan pocas páginas, una historia de amor, de traición, de desamor, de amistad, de respeto, de dolor, de despecho. Simplemente espectacular.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some sentences make you wince, but Salter is one of the best.

[Pilar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dice John Banville en el prólogo, que Salter utiliza en sus cuentos el "correlato objetivo" como nadie. Todo son acciones anodinas, imágenes banales, que subterráneamente suscitan emociones fortísimas sobre inquietudes, soledades e insatisfacciones. Muchas de las relaciones afectivas que describe narran en muy pocas páginas toda una existencia basándose sólo en lo esencial. Son como flashes de películas. Y esa fijación con los animales como metáfora: relaciones fugaces que acaban mientras un parajillo muere; perros como testigos del deseo erótico; caballos que tiran a mujeres que agonizan; gansos salvajes que vuelan al tiempo que los amantes rompen... Tanta sutileza, sí, pero reconozoco que todo es demasiado tenue y delicado para mis sentidos.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never read the introduction to a book of short stories. It'll spoil the endings, on the assumption that you've read them already or it's not important. This one also informed me that 'He is particularly good at writing young females' and dismissed The Hunters, which happens to be my favourite novel, as 'prentice work'. Once I got over grumping about this, I enjoyed the collection - which the introduction claims to be about 'the unending war between men and women', but I preferred to think of as being about Life.

[Clothears · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Salter writes such beautiful sentences. I have read Sport and a Pastime and Light Years so I wanted to explore more by him and this volume was ideal as it collects all of his published short stories. The writing is often so deceptively effortless that you find yourself almost forgiving the appalling behaviour and outdated attitudes of some of the characters. I liked most of these stories but for me there were four - Twenty Minutes, Such Fun, Charisma and Last Night that were outstanding.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without question one of my favorite short story collections ever. There's no one like him. The very definition of cool and talent.

[Ernest Ohlmeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Salter is a unique writer of stories and novels. He is apparently not widely known but has a small and devoted following. He is said to be a master of short, well constructed prose. Some might feel his stories are a bit bleak and off-putting in tone and subject matter. He usually describes unhappy people and relationships that are in decline. He writes beautifully but he is not given to happy endings. Nevertheless, I found the stories in this collection to be very powerful and realistic, sensitively wrought, and with strong moral undertones. Personally I liked them very much and think some will stay with me for quite awhile. I highly recommend this book and plan to also read some of his novels.

[David Villar Cembellín · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuentos completos recoge la obra corta completa de Salter: “Anochecer”, “La última noche” y un relato titulado “Carisma”. Ya había leído “La última noche” del cual, quitando el relato que da nombre al libro (obra maestra incontestable), ninguno me dejó mucho poso. Sin embargo, los relatos que no conocía me han parecido magníficos y la relectura de los que sí me ha pillado en otro momento vital, de tal manera que esta segunda lectura ha sido una experiencia muy diferente (destacaría sin dudar los relatos“Am Strande von Tanger”, “Platino” y “Bangkok”).

Seres desesperados, solitarios en busca del amor, dandis scottfitzgeraldianos y tristes varios pueblan los relatos de Salter, cuya prosa siempre es una maravilla. Y qué manera de cerrar los relatos, de cortarlos de una tajada, dejándolos siempre al borde del precipicio.

Maestría.

[Inge Janse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ik las collected stories altijd voordat ik in slaap viel. Dan werken mijn hersenen niet meer zo lekker en associëren ze wat vrijer dan normaal. Da's ideaal met dit boek, want de verhalen zitten echt barstensvol verspringende verhaallijnen, een constante aanwas van nieuwe namen en onlogische overgangen. Het resultaat: ik ging constant half dissocieren, waarbij verhaal en werkelijkheid door elkaar liepen. Soort gratis lsd, dus da's goud.

De verhalen zelf zijn, geloof ik, hit and miss. Het laatste verhaal is om te janken zo mooi, anderen waren chaos. Salters taalgebruik is van gruwelijke schoonheid. Elk woord lijkt een complete werkelijkheid onder zich te hebben liggen. Dat compenseert alleraardigst voor al die chaotische verhalen.

[Roger Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Salter is a remarkable discovery - I had never heard of him but he is an astonishing good writer. I deliberately took time over reading his collection of stories so that they did not all just merge with the night.

He has a very careful and interesting style - all the sleeve notes are true. A master of the oblique sentence at paragraph end, and examination of some extraordinarily difficult scenes.

I hope his novels are as good: sustaining that kind of interest and tension would be a triumph.

[José Miguel Tomasena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy buen cuentista. De los que juegan con lo no dicho, los silencios. Me gusta mucho cómo selecciona elementos insospechados de la vida de los personajes y luego los hila de manera inesperada.
Mis favoritos : American Express, Am Strande von Tanger, Contigo mi Señor, Veinte minutos, El regalo y La última noche.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Night is one of the best short stories I've read. Turns, twists, turns again, turns out not to be at all what you thought it was. Devastating in a completely un-sentimental way. Didn't read the whole collection, but also loved the story featuring a drunk poet/Irish wolfhound.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I still don’t understand the stellar reputation for the story - lop-sided slice of biography? - ‘American Express.’

He gives his female characters better internal monologues than I remember, even if they play one note over and over: regret.

[WordsBeyondBorders · Rating 4 out of 5]

பதாகை இத��ில் வெளிவந்தது - http://padhaakai.com/2016/01/24/james...

[Luiggi Serpi]

Sencillamente un ladrillo insoportable que deje a medias.

[Stuart McArthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

snapshots of relationships, deconstructed

The stories are difficult to access, which is also their strength. A lot of what’s really going on is unwritten. I had to reread almost all of them, firstly to clarify things I missed at the start but then the whole reread as it became clear I’d missed a lot more than I thought.

In Twenty Minutes, or Dusk, a car’s headlights illuminate a horse. In the next sentence they illuminate the horse a second time.

In the empty space between those two sentences so much happens. You lose all hope, you grieve for your lost optimism, daylight and delusion fade to black, a terrible sadness blankets you. It’s because the second illumination means the car is returning. After a dinner. Hours have passed. The whole texture of the story and your investment in the main character shifts in the space between a full stop and a capital letter.

In the same story there are moments where mundaneity is framed within gravity with an impact that cuts through your defences. The main character remembers she was going to spend a year living by the sea. It’s an achingly familiar plan and struck me deeply. The future really is nothing but a puff of smoke in our imaginations.

The last story will also live with me. Beautifully written, I was drawn into the moment, which was both expected and then totally unexpected. Salter created the profound then tilted it shockingly.

That’s what he does. He picks his moments, then rips off the lids of relationship motherboards so you can see the internal wiring in its most intricate flawed detail. Then he tinkers with it. Then we’re left distraught. Sometimes the wiser, usually the sadder, but there’s always the sense of benefit.

What a thing to be able to give to the world.

[Marcus Hobson · Rating 3 out of 5]

My second exposure to James Salter, after reading "A Sport and a Pastime" recently. Here there are twenty-two stories of various vintages. Although they are quite modern stories there is something about them that sets them back in the middle of the twentieth century, gives them a certain era.

I found this selection a mixed bunch. Some were excellent, others lacked the spark of greatness that makes you remember everything about them.

"Foreign Shores" for some reason reminded me of Nabokov, the setting with single mother and young child, although in Salter the action revolves around a foreign au pair. The final story of the collection, "Last Night", tells the story of a woman who, riddled with cancer, has asked her husband to deliver a lethal injection. He does not want to be alone, an so another woman is invited around, to share a final dinner and expensive wines. Having delivered the lethal injection, the husband then seduces the younger woman. In the morning, the wife stumbles down stairs, the injection has not done its job. It is an unexpected conclusion.

I marked some of the short lines and phrases that I enjoyed. When talking about an author, he says "He lived one life and imagined ten others, he could always find refuge in one of them."

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot to digest here. 22 stories in just over 300 pages felt like a lot, if not a bit overwhelming, anyway. Some I found brilliant, others mediocre, but all were at the very least thought-provoking. Unfortunately, it's hard for me as an unmarried, annoyingly optimistic 29-year-old to relate to the nonagenarian Salter's recurring themes in these pages. Most readers will have known love and loss, but infidelity, divorce, aging, pervasive bitterness, and poorly veiled misogyny were the overarching impressions I took from these stories. Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed 'Comet', 'Bangkok', 'Palm Court', and 'Last Night'. The latter, in fact, had in its scant 13 pages one of the most unexpected twists I've ever encountered in literature.

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:

"'Ezra Pound. Do you know about Ezra Pound?' 'No.' 'He was a traitor. He broadcast for the enemy during the war. They should have shot him.' 'What happened to him?' 'They gave him a poetry prize.'"

"They ate dinner in silence. Her husband did not look at her. Her face annoyed him, he did not know why. She could be good-looking but there were times when she was not. Her face was like a series of photographs, some of which ought to have been thrown away. Tonight it was like that."

"He could hear the couple talking. The woman, blond and smooth-browed, was in a glittering silver top. They were going out for the evening, into the stream of lights, boulevards, restaurants brimming with talk. He had only a glimpse of them setting forth, the light on her hair, the cab door held open for her, and for a moment forgot that he had everything."

"She was a woman who lived a certain life. She knew how to give dinner parties, take care of dogs, enter restaurants. She had her way of answering invitations, of dressing, of being herself. Incomparable habits, you might call them. She was a woman who had read books, played golf, gone to weddings, whose legs were good, who had weathered storms, a fine woman whom no one now wanted."

"He stood up. He had done everything wrong, he realized, in the wrong order. He had scuttled his life. 'Anyway, there's one thing I can say truthfully. I'd do it all over again if I had the chance.'"

"Her face was visible in the glass like a woman's on a train, indifferent, alone. Her beauty was directed toward no one. She seemed not to see him, she was lost in her thoughts. Then, coldly, without a word, her eyes met his. They did not waver. In that moment he realized she was worth everything."

"Death was coming for Harry Mies. He would lie emptied, his cheeks rouged, the fine, old man's ears unhearing. There was no telling the things he knew. He was alone in the far fields of his life. The rain fell on him, he did not move."

"Nan Christie had decided to get married. She brought it up one evening. 'I just don't think so,' he finally said. 'You love me, don't you?' 'This isn't a good time to ask.' They lay silently. She was staring at something across the room. She was making him feel uncomfortable. 'It wouldn't work. It's the attraction of opposites,' he said. 'We're not opposites.' 'I don't mean just you and me. Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave.'"

"He realized then, as she sat there, a woman in his apartment at night, a woman he knew he loved, that she was really giving him one last chance. He knew he should take it. 'Ah, Noreen,' he said. After that night, she vanished. Not suddenly, but it did not take long. She married Bobby. It was as simple as a death, but it lasted longer. It seemed it would never go away. She lingered in his thoughts. Did he exist in hers? he often wondered. Did she still feel, even if only a little, the way he felt? The years seemed to have no effect on it. She was in New Jersey somewhere, in some place he could not picture. Probably there was a family. Did she ever think of him? Ah, Noreen."

"'What are you reading?' she asked. 'Gogol.' 'Gogol...' He closed his eyes and began to recite, 'In the carriage sat a gentleman, not handsome but not bad-looking, not too stout and not too thin, not old, but not so very young...' 'What a memory you have.' 'Listen, what novel is this? For a long time I used to go to bed early...' 'That's too easy, she said. She was sitting on the couch, her legs drawn up beneath her, the book near her hand."

"He was later to tell her that words were no accident, their arrangement and choice was like another voice speaking, a voice which revealed everything. Vocabulary was like fingerprints, he said, like handwriting, like the body which revealed the invisible soul, which expressed it. His face was dark, his features deep. He was part of another, a mysterious race. She was aware of how different her own face was, with its wide mouth, its grey eyes, slow, curious, clear as a stream. She was aware also that the dress she wore, the depth of the chairs, the dimensions of this room now afloat in evening, all of these were part of an immersion into the flow of a great life. Her heart was beating slowly but hard. She had never felt so sure of herself, so bewildered by the ease with which it was all happening."

"She was afraid of what she was doing. What was next? She knew about California but she had surrendered herself. 'What's going to happen?' she asked him. 'What do you mean?' 'Tell the truth. What is it you want?' 'You know what's going to happen.' 'What does that mean?' she said in despair. He took her in his arms. 'Don't,' she said. 'Don't, please.' She turned away. They had been married for three months when, after a series of arguments as a Thanksgiving dinner with friends, she opened a bedroom window and jumped to her death from the eighteenth floor. She had said nothing. She left no note."

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dusk is purely better, but this contains within it: Dusk and .Last Night and also other stories (a few)....the stories found only here are not his best but if you get this book it renders the other books useless whereas the opposite isn't true...conundrum, that! I say if only gonna get one get this, but I prefer the chronology of the others (not overthought and the order they were written (I think))but then again the completeness of this one, I am gonna shrug. Fuck it, Im shrugging! Here it goes, and my shoulders are very high, up near my goddamn ears, this here is a shrug....I Cant figure your life out of for you! I can't do everything, he said and laid his hands out for you like a dealer in vegas (I am walking away without stealing cards or taking chips, look at me, eye in the sky). O yeah, Salter is great; one of my favorite american sentence makers.

[Parvathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most short story collections (unless you are Carver or Munro) tend to be a mixed bag. So it is with this one - some really good ones interspersed with duds. Salter writes beautifully well - some phrases and observations leave you catching a breath. But his tales have a somewhat effete, turn-of-the-century quality to them, that's quite adolescent. A certain carelessness about relationships and people, exotic Europe, alcoholism and artists, older men and young girls, wives and mistresses.... all a bit Fitzgerald-ish, but without the empathy. At some point, you have to outgrow Salter.

[Rodrigo Gonzalez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A death on a horse, a day in Barcelona, an assisted suicide. This guy does everything, and he does it amazingly well. But some of the stories are too hard - or too bad - to understand. They are all incredibly sad. The last one made me hate Salter.

[Steven Moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute master of the short story form. Essential reading if you're into that kind of thing.

[latner3 · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 stars 3 stars 4 stars.

[Vel · Rating 4 out of 5]

you may try to read these without being reduced to sobs

[Peter Gooch · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection to keep handy & refer to often. For anyone who likes the English language. Salter is incomparable in his unsparing insights and austere prose.

[Anamaria · Rating 3 out of 5]

All too human and relatable.

[Allyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was curious about this but having previously read many of these stories, I ended up being more annoyed and depressed with the read than I might otherwise have been. I also remember being completely underwhelmed and irritated with his last novel which affected me while reading this collection. I am done with Mr. Salter now.