Dusk and Other Stories

by James Salter, Philip Gourevitch

First published nearly a quarter-century ago and one of the very few short-story collections to win the PEN/Faulkner Award, this is American fiction at its most vital—each narrative a masterpiece of sustained power and seemingly effortless literary grace. Two New York attorneys newly flush with wealth embark on a dissolute tour of Italy; an ambitious young screenwriter unexpectedly discovers the true meaning of art and glory; a rider, far off in the fields, is involved in an horrific accident—night is falling, and she must face her destiny alone. These stories confirm James Salter as one of the finest writers of our time.

Am strande von Tanger --
Twenty minutes --
American express --
Foreign shores --
The cinema --
Lost sons --
Akhnilo --
Dusk --
Via negativa --
The destruction of the Goetheanum --
Dirt

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, American, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Novels

160 pages, Paperback

First published February 22, 1988

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

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, Salterland! Where it’s always 196—. Where Town is a gleaming oak bar, Country a superb yet forsaken woman who drinks a little too much (and has a good chance of dying in a riding accident), and Europa a precocious gamine who is really down for anything, you just have to ask. I wouldn’t want a woman who hadn’t already lived a few lives, and so the title story “Dusk,” and “Foreign Shores,” stories of durable divorcees, autumn roses, seemed to me the most effective (affective is what I mean). “The Cinema” was a disappointment and most of the rest merely ok. I turned to the final story, “Dirt,” last night, expecting it to do no more than elegantly divert that last half hour of consciousness, dance in the remaining half inch of my nightcap. But it wowed me. I sat up on the pillows. High-toned Salter strides into the roadhouse of “Dirty Realism”—ranch hands nursing beers, waitresses with kids; the few and eloquent belongings of itinerants; the spare sayings of old men worked to the bone—and emerges with a story that Andre Dubus would envy. Salter probably thinks his talent for laconic dialogue best realized by the breathy, awkward English, cryptic yet assenting, of European schoolgirls. Turns out he can voice an elderly Okie with something like genius. ‘Say,’ he said. There was something he wanted to tell. He looked at the ground. ‘Ever been West?’

[Charles White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread. Second of rereading all of Salter this year. "Ameican Express" may be one of the best short stories written by an American.

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sadly, I only discovered James Salter recently, after reading his obituary. His popularity among other writers doesn't surprise me. The prose in this collection of short stories dazzles. Salter has a way of juxtaposing a flurry of images within the space of a paragraph while only supplying just enough information to allow the reader's progress through the narrative. A lot of the characters in this particular collection seem to be women resolved to their bitterness - failed lives or living failures. When I was most engaged, as with the story Dirt (my favorite of the bunch) he conveys his metaphors without writing them on the nose. They appear once the story has finished, there all along. These are stories demanding to be read again. You need their endings to appreciate their beginnings, which is one of the reasons I'm not surprised I hadn't heard of Salter before.

There were moments reading these stories when the prose slipped over the page like a double layer of velum. The imagery is precise but erratic. Eventually, the sentences amount to an incredible shape of story but the process, particularly the first read, can be disorienting. It wouldn't be fair to call Salter's prose arduous, his project is more satisfying than that, rather, while reading I often had the experience of losing my engagement - my eyes scanned over the words while my mind wandered and when I "awoke" I had to go back and find the sentence where I derailed in order to start again. I had that experience with these stories too many times to be coincidental.

I am intrigued enough to pursue more Salter. I look forward to trying one of his novels, where his thoughts can have a little more room to stretch, and where I might be able to find his rhythm, as a reader, more easily.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I must be missing something since everyone who rated this book of short stories raved about it. I found the language way too spare. Rather than terse, it seemed stilted and artificial. I read 4 stories before giving up. Every story either struck me as completely opaque, contrived, pointless, or poorly resolved ... I just didn't get it.

[Cateline · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Salter's Dusk and Other Stories is a little difficult for me to rate as a whole. It wanders from three star to five plus stars. A collection of short stories by the master of spare, beautiful prose. Several stand out, such as Akhnilo, a powerful story of a man possibly slipping back into schizophrenia. In a few lines Salter shows the reader the effects of mental illness on the sufferers family. Then there is the screamingly effective Twenty Minutes featuring a woman that is the suffering a lonely and painful, not to mention sudden, death.

Dusk the piece the collection is named for is a poignant ending of an affair, beautifully written, encapsulating the aloneness of the woman.

All in all, reading Salter's work the reader will experience life dissolving events, disillusionment, desperation, the sheer ordinariness of life. He manages to encapsulate a life in a few pages of concise, spare, but beautiful prose.

So, I believe I have my answer, it's a 5 star read. Not because I loved each and every story. But because each is a powerful statement about the human condition that will stay with me.
And, in the final analysis, isn't that why we read?

[Jack Rousseau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dusk and Other Stories includes eleven stories: "Am Strande von Tanger", "Twenty Minutes", "American Express", "Foreign Shores", "The Cinema", "Lost Sons", "Akhnilo", "Dusk", "Via Negativa", "The Destruction of the Goetheanum", and "Dirt".

My overall impression of the stories... The author frequently relates the stories of American expatriates living in Europe. Although he wasn't exactly an expatriate, Salter spent his many years of military service (in the 1940s and 50s) in Europe, where he undoubtedly met many American expatriates and overheard a great many stories. Indeed, the stories of this collection have an "overheard" quality. The narrator may be omnipresent (if I remember correctly, the stories are all told in the third person), but important details are often conveyed from one character to another - rather than directly witnessed to the reader. This effect also creates an ambiguity that creates or contributes to one conflict or another. Indeed, there is always conflict. Salter's stories may be rooted in the exploration of character, but he knows as well as the best writers of his generation that the best outlet for revealing character is conflict.

The author is deserving of comparison to Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller. In many ways, he is Hemingway's equal. I consider him to be superior to Henry Miller, although he does sometimes succumb to a light version of the sexism and racism that characterizes Miller's work. The offensive material is minor enough that it did not detract from my reading. Irksome details that the stories would be better without. Details that contribute nothing. Unfortunate affliction of Salter's generation of writers (as well as the earlier generation that included Miller).

Unlike Hemingway or Miller who, for all appearances, wrote stories predominantly or entirely from the perspective of men, several stories are told from a female perspective. Salter's female perspective, however, lacks the insight of a story about a woman written by a woman. Not surprising. I want to give him credit for trying. But I have reservations. For example, the themes explored in the title story, "Dusk", feel redundant. The story is about a woman in the "dusk" of her years. Not surprisingly, she is preoccupied by aging, by her divorce and the fear that her options for a new husband are dwindling. The story is well written, but the desperation of its character is a bit obvious.

A bit obvious, too, is the desperation of the woman in "Twenty Minutes". But this is a desperation we can understand. A desperation that transcends gender. The "Twenty Minutes" of the title refers to the twenty minutes the character believes she has to get help after sustaining a serious injury. ("She knew she had some time. Twenty minutes, they always said." - pg. 19) Indeed, a man or woman in this position would undoubtedly appear desperate. In both stories, this desperation serves to reveal character. We learn that one has seduced a married man (in "Dusk"), the nature of another's relationship with her father (in "Twenty Minutes"). But surely there must be another way to reveal the intricacies of a female character...

A cinematic quality may be attributed to the author's interest in film. Indeed, the author worked as a scriptwriter and a filmmaker in the same period these stories were written. His love of film is evident in the language, in the description, in the dialogue... More overtly, his love of film is evident in stories like "The Cinema" that deal directly with the cinematic arts, dropping names like Fellini, dropping references like The Bicycle Thief...

I found two of the later stories, "Via Negativa" and "The Destruction of the Goetheanum", to be somewhat indulgent. Although I enjoyed both stories, its a liability that a writer writing about a writer will come across as indulgent. Indeed, "Via Negativa" is particularly indulgent, following the kind of failed writer who believes "there is a great, final glory which falls on certain figures barely noticed in their time..." (pg. 105) What saves this particular story from succumbing to its own indulgences is the ambiguity of the author's portrayal of his protagonist. His "sad bones" may be made of literature. His opinions may be "cold but accurate". His favourite writers may be Robert Musil and Gerard Manley Hopkins.... But what does it all amount to if the protagonist himself can't publish? If he is cynical? If the woman he loves doesn't believe in him?

Does Salter believe, as his protagonist believes, that obscurity is rewarded? As it was upon Gogol? (who, as the protagonist points out, "died a virgin", thereby serving as the perfect role model for protagonist who believes in purity, whose chastity remains untouched by the corruption influences of mainstream audiences and mass market appeal.) That he lingers outside of closed shops and experiences "a great longing for money" and "a desire to be recognized" draws comparison to the protagonists of Brautigan's "1/3, 1/3, 1/3", desperate misfits who "pound at the gates of American literature". Unlike these misfits, however, Salter's protagonist must retain his pretensions by absolving his obscurity with quotes from other great misfits (like Cocteau who said: "There's a fame worse than failure." - pg. 111)

Ultimately "Via Negativa" falls short of "The Destruction of the Goetheanum" for one crucial reason... Salter is the champion of his protagonist in "Via Negativa". We learn of his loves and exploits through Salter, the objective and omnipresent narrator. When the protagonist tells his "big fish" stories we know they are "big fish" stories because Salter has told us otherwise. Whereas the writer of "The Destruction of the Goetheanum" is not the protagonist but the husband of the love interest of the protagonist. We are so removed that when the wife of the writer indulges his exploits, there remains all the ambiguity, all the mystery, and all the obscurity that the protagonist of "Via Negativa" lacks. And in this way, Salter sets up the writer of "The Destruction of the Goetheanum" for a fall, for a destruction comparable to the destruction of the "Goetheanum" - which was appropriately enough a structure built on ideas, the ideas of Goethe.

Here, the unreliability of our narrator (that is, the wife who is the narrator of her husband's literary exploits) is acknowledged. ("She quoted a few lines of Valéry which he later found out were incorrect. Afternoons torn by wind, the stinging sea . . . She adored Valéry. An anti-Semite, she said. - pg. 120) As if there's some virtue to being an anti-Semite, some credit to his literary prowess that he is flawed. When the protagonist finally meets her literary husband, he too proves unreliable. There is a sort of paradox when one unreliable character outs another character for being unreliable, as the husband does the wife. ("She sometimes tells . . . fantastic lies." - pg. 126)

A memorable scene, that summarizes the relationship of husband and wife, the conflict between her reality and his fantasy, is related by the wife to the protagonist...

He was growing feverish. He could no longer read. He wanted to dictate some final things, Nadine took them down. He insisted on being buried with her photograph over his heart, he had made her promise to tear it from her passport.
"How will I get home?" she had asked.
(pg. 123)

My favourite story in the collection is the first story, "Am Strande von Tanger". Salter's spare description. The sort of snapshot or montage effect he employs in the early passages of this story. The characters. His description of the characters - that is, the details chosen by the author, their order suggesting importance decided by the author. Their relevance to the characters individually, interpersonally, and geographically (the location playing a central role in the story of three Expatriates)...

Barcelona at dawn. The hotels are dark. All the great avenues are pointing to the sea.
The city is empty. Nico is asleep. She is bound by twisted sheets, by her long hair, by a naked arm which falls from beneath her pillow. She lies still, she does not even breathe.
In a cage outlined beneath a square of silk that is indigo blue and black, her bird sleeps, Kalil. The cage is in an empty fireplace which has been scrubbed clean. There are flowers beside it and a bowl of fruit. Kalil is asleep, his head beneath the softness of a wing.
Malcolm is asleep. His steel-rimmed glasses which he does not need—there is no prescription in them—lie open on the table. He sleeps on his back and his nose rides the dream world like a keel. This nose, his mother’s nose or at least a replica of his mother’s, is like a theatrical device, a strange decoration that has been pasted on his face. It is the first thing one notices about him. It is the first thing one likes. The nose in a sense is a mark of commitment to life. It is a large nose which cannot be hidden. In addition, his teeth are bad.
At the very top of the four stone spires which Gaudi left unfinished the light has just begun to bring forth gold inscriptions too pale yet to read. There is no sun. There is only a white silence. Sunday morning. The early mornings of Spain. A mist covers all of the hills which surround the city. The stores are closed.
Nico has come out on the terrace after her bath. The towel is wrapped around her, water still glistens on her skin.
“It’s cloudy,” she says. “It’s not a good day for the sea.”
Malcolm looks up.
“It may clear,” he says.
Morning. Villa-Lobos is playing on the phonograph. The cage is on a stool in the doorway. Malcolm lies in a canvas chair eating an orange. He is in love with the city. He has a deep attachment to it based in part on a story by Paul Morand and also on an incident which occurred in Barcelona years before: one evening in the twilight Antonio Gaudi, mysterious, fragile, even saintlike, the city’s great architect, was hit by a streetcar as he walked to church. He was very old, white beard, white hair, dressed in the simplest of clothes. No one recognized him. He lay in the street without even a cab to drive him to the hospital. Finally he was taken to the charity ward. He died the day Malcolm was born.
The apartment is on Avenida General Mitre and her tailor, as Nico calls him, is near Gaudi’s cathedral at the other end of town. It’s a working class neighborhood, there’s a faint smell of garbage. The site is surrounded by walls. There are quatrefoils printed in the sidewalk. Soaring above everything, the spires. Sanctus, sanctus, they cry. They are hollow. The cathedral was never completed. Its doors lead both ways into open air. Malcolm has walked, in the calm Barcelona evening, around this empty monument many times. He has stuffed peseta notes, virtually worthless, into the slot marked: donations to continue the work. It seems on the other side they are simply falling to the ground or, he listens closely, a priest wearing glasses locks them in a wooden box.
Malcolm believes in Malraux and Max Weber: art is the real history of nations. In the details of his person there is evidence of a process not fully complete. It is the making of a man into a true instrument. He is preparing for the arrival of that great artist he one day expects to be, an artist in the truly modern sense which is to say without accomplishments but with the conviction of genius. An artist freed from the demands of craft, an artist of concepts, generosity, his work is the creation of the legend of himself. So long as he is provided with even a single follower he can believe in the sanctity of this design.
He is happy here. He likes the wide, tree-cool avenues, the restaurants, the long evenings. He is deep in the currents of a slow, connubial life.
(pg. 3-5)

[Peter Mathews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I can see, intellectually, that James Salter is a talented writer, these stories failed to touch me emotionally or creatively.

Salter is very much a writer of moods - indeed, each of these pieces is like a different slice of atmospheric moodiness, usually melancholy, uncertain, searching for a resolution that never really comes.

He is also a writer of complex thoughts, and these are the moments that I liked best in his work. These are represented in the passages where we delve deeply in the thoughts and delusions of a character, often into ideas that are unsociable or even taboo.

Take this description of the character Malcolm in the opening story of the collection:

"Malcolm believes in Malraux and Max Weber: art is the real history of nations. In the details of his person there is evidence of a process not fully complete. It is the making of a man into a true instrument. He is preparing for the arrival of that great artist he one day expects to be, an artist in the truly modern sense which is to say without accomplishments but with the conviction of genius. An artist freed from the demands of craft, an artist of concepts, generosity, his work is the creation of the legend of himself. So long as he is provided with even a single follower he can believe in the sanctity of this design."

That is a brilliant observation, one that flirts with artistic narcissism and simultaneously deflates it. These are the gems to be found scattered throughout the stories in this book.

Unfortunately for me, these moments of lucid insight are not enough. I want story, man! Salter falters seriously in this respect, as we drift into the lives of his characters, see into their complexity, and then abruptly drop out again. There is not a story here that doesn't follow this exact pattern.

Look, I get it. There is a trend in American short story writing of this period that savors this type of writing. It's straight out of the Raymond Carver playbook.

But me, I want narrative, story, drive, conflict and resolution! It's there in so many other great American short story writers - yes, Poe, Hawthorne, James, all the classics. But it is also there in relative contemporaries such as O'Connor, Updike, even Cheever, to whom Salter is sometimes compared. Without that element to give the underlying ideas a bit of spice and coherence, this kind of storytelling is just not my cup of tea.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slater is known as a writer's writer. His prose is understated, but he paints exquisite portraits of people, places, and lives. I took my time reading this collection of short stores in order to savor them. The stories do more than describe people and places. Each one conveyed a mood, and the feeling of a time and place. Salter rarely gives the reader extraneous details. Sometimes I wasn't sure where the story was taking place or even the decade. Endings were sometimes so subtle I had to reread to see if I'd missed some clue. His descriptions of environments are at times random, reminiscent of a camera's eye.For me, Slater is a writer I will read and reread.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revised Review

From the introduction by Philip Gourevitch:

"The pilot was called, as he had been from birth, James Horowitz. The writer called himself James Salter. He was handsome, and he had style. He lived in Europe. His prose announced itself with a high modernist elegance. He made language spare and lush all at once—strong feelings made stronger by abbreviation, intense physicality haunted by a whiff of metaphysics: for everything that is described, even more is evoked.

These books all have the flickering hyper-vividness of cinema, the atmospherics, the jump-cut acuity, and that swift, skimming telegraphic emotion that gives a sense of immense depth to surfaces. Of course Salter achieves his effects without using anything more than any other writer—just words on paper—and so he makes other writers take notice and wonder how he does it."

Amen.

My admiration for James Salter’s craft only increased after reading this collection of short stories. Especially relevant is when Gourevitch notes: “These books all have the flickering hyper-vividness of cinema, the atmospherics, the jump-cut acuity, and that swift, skimming telegraphic emotion that gives a sense of immense depth to surfaces."

I’m currently reading a collection of Salter’s letters and was surprised to discover that his involvement with the film business was deeper than I first believed. In addition to directing a film in 1969 (Three with Sam Waterston), Salter wrote a number of screenplays for movies that actually got produced, including Downhill Racer with Robert Redford and Gene Hackman. So the comparison to film is apt. Salter's short stories are among the best examples of their type. In his short stories the language is spare, elegant but capable of such depth. They are, indeed, hyper-vivid and resemble film at its best. I finish one wishing to know more about these perplexed people, to hear more of their story but in a flash it is over. You are left to reflect on the story and what, exactly, Salter is trying to say.

Four and a half stars.

[George Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long after the evening was over he still swam in thoughts of it. He washed his underwear distractedly. Somewhere in the shuttered city, the river black with fall, he knew they were together, he did not resent it. He lay in bed like a poor student—how little life changes from the first to the last—and fell asleep clutching his dreams. The windows were open. The cold air poured over him like sea on a blind sailor, drenching him, filling the room. He lay with his legs crossed at the ankle like a martyr, his face turned to God.

[Zuberino · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not prose, this is some kind of transcendence. James Salter takes the baton from Hemingway in the long relay that is the American short story, and turns in a dazzling performance.

[thirdbaseintherye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dusk has made me worried that I’ve grown a little weary of Salter, and right when I needed him most perhaps. It’s possible that for me his short stories just don’t really click, so I’ll return to his longer form works sometimes soon to see if the spell persists or is truly broken. I did find some of these stories to be pretty exquisite, and as always the individual lines are almost all gorgeous, but I think that Salter’s characters and atmospheres need time to breathe and they weren’t granted this in most of these exceptionally brief pieces.

I really liked American Express and Foreign Shores, the latter of which was unexpectedly unnerving. I also loved the Rudolf Steiner references in The Destruction Of The Goetheanum, but I’m biased there. The other stories were mainly just little fragments of Salter’s world, and I felt almost teased by them. Here’s to hoping my next expedition into Salter’s work is as miraculous as I need it to be.

[Kerry Booth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the more difficult reads I’ve had. It made me wonder about those books and authors ‘they’ go on about, stylists that seem to obfuscate good stories with technique. A Salter story should not be devoured quickly; there is too much he leaves unsaid.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

few writers are this hot. however, he's incapable of writing a 5 star book. foreign shores is a 5 star story though

[Sharon Bakar · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
An excellent collection of short stories several of which I read more than once. They need time and attention and more than repay it. I know I will come back to the book. Some notes on individual short stories I particularly liked:

Am Strande von Tanger - set in Barcelona - a couple sharing an apartment. Beautiful serene beginning. A friend (hers) a German woman comes over and the three of them go to the beach for the day - so little happens on the surface - yet beneath it everything shifts in the couple's relationship, the woman has completely changed the dynamics of the relationship. They return to the same apartment and yet the atmosphere has shifted profoundly.
Twenty minutes - is a grenade of a story, exploded in my hand. It may well join my growing list of favourite ever short stories. A woman has a fatal accident while out riding - the important moments of her life pass by her, seen in vignettes. We get a very full picture of who she is and how her life was lived. The opening is intriguing - the narrator of the story meets the woman at a party and they talk about the dog she has rescued. How could he later be right inside her head except for imaginative reconstruction?
The title story Dusk is elegant and sad and happens in just a small pocket of time as the afternoon turns to evening, yet so much is played out. A divorced woman lives along in a house on the beach tastefully furnished. Her child drowned years before. The odd-job man comes to call, to check if she needs any repairs done before the winter. They had an affair. It's over now because he is back with his wife. What does she have to look forward to? Loneliness spools out before her.
The Cinema is about the making of a Hollywood film on location in Italy from the moment the leading actress walks onto the set. A whole world is captured in the space of a few pages. Although the viewpoint shifts between the various characters involved in this project (actor, producer, director, secretary), the main one is clearly the writer, a young man on the periphery of the action, often overlooked or forgotten even though the words he has written are central to the whole venture. Loved the well-deserved happy ending.
Dirt - very simple but evocative story. Billy and Harry are laying the foundations of a house. Harry is older, and dyingbut he won't give up and works as hard as ever. Billy is asked at one point in the bar how much he's earning - it's clear that money isn't the thing that keeps him with Harry, so we need to work out what is.
Akhnilo might be the best story in the book - very powerful. A man awakens in the dead of night and hears a noise. It might be a burglar and there have been burglaries in the neighbourhood. But as he listens, the quality of the sound changes. It seems to be coming from a shed. Eventually he makes out voices and distinct words. In the house he manages to write down only one (Akhnilo?) before he collapses. This is a story about a descent into a nervous breakdown and brilliantly done.
Foreign Shores Sexual tensions rise in a single-parent household when a woman takes in a "drab" dutch au pair to look after her six year old son. One of my favourite pieces in the book.

[Proustitute (on hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should preface this by saying that I���m not typically a big fan of contemporary short stories: I���m certainly not one to go in for many of the often formulaic and derivative New Yorker style pieces that seem to abound in just about every magazine and collection���often the very ones that get praised so highly. I���m much more interested in short stories that work well, and I���ve found that this is only the case for those who pioneered the form and who were masters at it: Poe, James, Mansfield, Borges, and company. However, I am trying to make an effort in 2013 to read more short stories, so I picked up Salter���s only short story collection today.

������Imagine my surprise: me, a reader who prefers novels, besotted by the only short story collection this man wrote. I���m not even sure what Salter does that is so bewitching: his prose is simplistic; his sentences tend to be laconic and terse. But he does very intriguing things with temporality, and he���s able to move adroitly from one character���s perspective to another���s without leaving the reader feeling jarred or causing his narrative to flounder. There is also a skill evident here when it comes to shifting levels of consciousness and memory���for example, in ���Twenty Minutes,��� a woman who has been thrown from her horse, and knowing she has twenty minutes before shock gives way to full-blown pain, relives the most pressing memories in her life in a nonlinear fashion that isn���t Salter writing stream-of-consciousness so much as him proving to be incisive in getting at people���s various states of psychological unrest and feelings of loneliness.

This is also a wide-ranging collection: the title story is one of the strongest���so it���s no surprise that the collection is named after it���and deals with the static life of a woman turned forty-nine, her regrets and her conflicted ways of dealing with those in her every day life; one piece looks at the levels of camaraderie, resentment, and jealousy in our adult relationships as they are formed in early life by focusing on a reunion at West Point; and another story offers an hallucinatory midnight stroll through the suburbs as a man who is a recovering alcoholic either falls off the wagon or, and Salter is really superb in this piece (���Akhnilo���), is completely sober.

I���ve reached the ten-minute deadline I give myself for most reviews on here, but I don���t yet feel that I���ve been able to convey just how Salter���s prose struck me here���nor can I attempt to describe just what he does. But whatever he does, he does remarkably well and with such grace and ease that it���s a marvel the complex depths he plumbs here.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fine little collection of short stories formerly released by the (sadly) defunct North Point Press, who published reasonably priced trade paper editions (with sewn bindings and acid-free paper) of good literary fiction. These stories were originally published in Paris Review and Esquire. The work tends toward a concise moodiness, expressing feelings of loss and the passage of time, looking at loneliness in the midst of material comfort. It is a book that stayed with me, and that I have found myself thinking about a number of times since I read it.

Salter clearly draws on Hemingway for his sentence structure: simple, declarative, unafraid. But the similarity does not go much further. He deals with a variety of protagonists - women, writers, would-be writers, the well-off, and the not-so-well-off also. He has an excellent eye for the telling detail, and uses these rather than stating how his characters feel. Salter is great at presenting brief moments of sight, sound, and thought to create a tone and communicate the emotional resonances of his stories.

There were no weak links among these 11 stories. Among the better ones was a look at a disintegrating relationship in "Am Strande von Tanger." "American Express" and "Foreign Shores" effectively express the disillusionment of a couple of successful young lawyers and a wealthy divorcee who is approaching middle age. "The Cinema" subtly skewers the foolish vanity of show biz, and "Dusk" is a touching and unblinking portrayal of a lonely woman. "Via Negativa" and "The Destruction of Goetheanum" animate the anger and despair of a couple of failed writers. The life of a manual laborer is surprisingly well depicted in "Dirt."

I definitely plan to read some more James Salter, a man who may not have sold a lot of books, but whose name is known to writers everywhere.

[John Pappas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Salter's stories are like strange rough-hewn gems, irregularly shaped, refracting light oddly. At moments, they seem almost commonplace, but when you lean in closer to inspect one of the story's many facets, you are suddenly and disproportionately dazzled. Salter's stretching of the form and structure of the short story and his amplification of various aspects in novel ways make the stories in this collection shine. His methods of characterization and ear for figurative language creates sentences that on their own may seem mundane, but in the context of the story shimmer with import. While I appreciate Salter's novels a bit better, where he has time and room to stretch out a bit and run, these stories are particularly well-crafted examples of the form. And, oh, the heart! Each word of these stories beats and pulses with rich sympathy and pathos.

[Alejandro Orradre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Los relatos de James Salter tienen la misma esencia que sus novelas, que no es otra que una narración pausada que se acerca a la mera contemplación. No hay grandes dosis de acción, pero sí de cotidianidad y el suave devenir del tiempo.

En Anochecer se nos presentan una serie de historias cortas que parece que no explican nada pero al mismo tiempo son un ejemplo perfecto del ser humano. Es pura ficción contemporánea, en la que Salter huye de cualquier elemento distorsionador -como la fantasía o el realismo mágico- para narrar vidas reales, una de las miles con las que nos cruzamos por la calle y no somos conscientes.

Y yo sin conocer a este autor hasta hace apenas un mes... por suerte todavía tengo mucho por descubrir.

[Cojaysea · Rating 1 out of 5]

i don't know what was greater the raves for this volume or the disappointment i had after reading it..the stories reminded me a bit of PAUL BOWLES only they didn't generate the anxiety and fear that lies underneath his stories…in all fairness i guess I'm more of a novel guy anyway ..it seems that science fiction is the only genre that i really like short stories….my favorite short story author is ALICE MUNRO ..the tales in this volume i found wanting ….empty

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Akhnilo" is incredible, like Cheever's The Swimmer. The rest is good too, I know, but it isn't for me. We don't find the same details heartbreaking....and I don't know how to fall in love with "complaisance," a girl characteristic that repeats twice, or girl neurotica, which repeats endlessly and uselessly to me.

[rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always come back to Salter to cleanse my palette. To ground me after reading experimental fiction. To give me something sturdy to lean into on the subway. His economy of language paired with the sun and moon touching the objects he describes, makes him a worthwhile author to visit with whenever you need a nice slant on a regular beauty.

[Richie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story American Express affected me like no other--two middle-aged businessmen with nothing left of their souls driving around Europe with a teenage schoolgirl. I was in ruins after reading it. The rest of the stories were sadly forgettable.

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just like his novel Light Years, Salter delights with these stories, eloquent and precise, beautiful and lyrical, with subtle insights and keen understanding. If you haven't picked up Salter yet, do yourself a favor and do it!

[Luna Saint Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of character studies -- In the same way the old masters painted a detailed study of their subject, James Salter draws his characters in detail, painting them with fine brush strokes.

[Armin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Großartige Höhepunkte, schnell vergessener Durchschnitt

Eine Warnung an potenzielle Leser vorweg: lasst Euch nicht von meinen drei Sternen abschrecken, sie geben meinen gefühlten Durchschnitt über alle 11 Stories wieder. Und den Storyband, in denen alle für fünf Sterne gut sind, gibt es meines Erachtens nicht, nicht einmal bei Maupassant oder Somerset Maugham oder dem jungen Irwin Shaw, auch wenn die Altmeister vielleicht einen höheren Gesamtdurchschnitt erreicht hätten als Salter, der ihre historischen Verdienste mit „Die Zerstörung des Goetheanums“ aber durchaus in den Schatten stellen kann.
Denn jene drei, denen ich in meiner persönlichen Bilanz fünf Sterne gegeben habe, gehören für mich zu den Lesehöhepunkten der letzten Jahre, „Die Zerstörung des Goetheanums“ ist für mich gar eine der besten Stories überhaupt, jedenfalls hat sie mich beeindruckt, wie lange nichts mehr, obwohl mir die ersten Seiten dieser atmosphärischen Dreiecksgeschichte überaus sperrig vorkamen. Der namenlose Hauptheld verliebt sich in Basel in eine etwas seltsame Frau, die sich ihm nach Momenten der intensiv gefühlten geistigen Nähe, immer wieder entzieht. Nadine hat ihr Leben dem bislang erfolglosen Schriftsteller Hedges gewidmet, der seit Jahren an seinem Lebenswerk arbeitet, das ein neues Zeitalter einläuten soll und neben der eigenen Biographie das esoterische Geheimwissen aller Zeiten aufarbeitet. Rudolf Steiner ist eines der Idole von Hedges und Nadine, die wegen des Goetheanums in die Gegend gekommen sind. Beim ungleichen Paar, das eine Leidenstour durch Europa hinter sich hat, kriselt es, aber die Hauptperson ist ebenso zwischen dem faszinierenden Bild, das Nadine von Hedges zeichnet und seinem Bedürfnis nach der Unfassbaren hin- und hergerissen.
»Hedges war vierzig, er hatte fast keine Freunde, seine Frau war irgendwo daheim in Connecticut, er hatte sie verlassen, hatte der Vergangenheit den Rücken gekehrt. Wenn er nicht groß war, so folgte er doch dem Pfad der Größe, was einer Katastrophe gleichkam. Und er besaß die Macht jemand dazu zu bringen, sich ihm ganz zu widmen. Sie war ständig um ihn. Er lässt mich nie aus den Augen beschwerte sie sich.«
Das ist eine der Analysen, die der Erzähler über das verkannte Genie zieht, das die geliebte Frau blockiert. Es gibt keinen Autor, der die Lebenslügen der verkannten Schriftsteller so großartig auf den Punkt bringt.
Die zweite Hälfte von Salters Erinnerungsbuch »Verbrannte Tage« ist vom Gefühl des Verkanntseins gezeichnet, in diesen Erzählungen aus den Siebzigern brennt dieses Thema noch etliche hundert Grad heißer. Auch in der Erzählung »Via Negativa«, in der ein erfolgloser Autor bemerken muss, dass sich seine Geliebte, die er gar nicht so besonders hoch einschätzt, umorientiert hat. Aber für den Bestsellerautor, der ihn noch kurz zuvor eine Abfuhr erteilt hat, ist das etwas schräge Mädchen erste Wahl. Insbesondere die ersten beiden Seiten sind überaus autobiographisch. enthalten sie doch eine gnadenlose Abrechnung mit „W“, einem unverkennbaren Portrait von Irwin Shaw, der in den Siebzigern bei konstant nachlassender Qualität mit seinen Büchern ein Vermögen machte, während Salter vermutlich eher ein Leben wie der armselige Hedges führte. Falls er nicht gerade Drehbücher schrieb oder Fernseharbeit verrichtete. Die Erzählung „Kino“ ist ein Reflex darauf, kommt aber nicht so recht auf den Punkt und wirkt wie ein schwacher 1:25-Abklatsch von Shaws bestem Roman (Zwei Wochen in einer anderen Stadt).
Meine weiteren Favoriten sind „Am Strande von Tanger“, eine schräge Geschichte um einen irgendwie verkorksten Tag im Leben eines Pärchens, das sich in Barcelona gefunden hat, in dessen Verlauf an kleinen Symbolen deutlich wird, dass etwas zwischen den beiden zerbrochen ist, während sie den Besuch von Nicos dumpfbackiger deutscher Bekanntschaft Inge ertragen.
»Zwanzig Minuten« wurde ja schon in mehreren Posts positiv hervorgehoben, wie anderswo schon erwähnt, geht es um die beschriebene Zeitspanne im Leben einer Frau, deren Unterleib bei einem verunglückten Sprung über ein Hindernis vom eigenen Pferd zertrümmert wurde.
Nun liegt sie leicht abseits einer wenig befahrenen Straße, In ihrem Strram of Consciusness zieht ihr Leben an ihr vorüber, ihr erster Gedanke gilt ihrem einstigen Lieblingspferd, das nach einem Beinbruch erschossen werden musste. Auf die Analogie zur eigenen Situation folgt der Blick auf die zu weit entfernten Häuser, in denen gerade das Licht angeht und an eine Party, die sie in einem ausgerichtet hat. Doch der Besitzer ist längst weg und pleite, sie selbst hat dort eine denkwürdige Pleite erlebt, als sie dem Besitzer ein unmissverständliches Angebot gemacht hat, das aber nicht seiner Veranlagung entsprach. Das Ende der eigenen Ehe, das sich auf der besagten Straße ereignet hat und Urlaubserinnerungen folgen in einer ebenso zufällig wie banalen Mischung, während die Zeit verstreicht.

Wie gut die einzelne Story bei einem ankommt, hängt natürlich immer von den eigenen Leseerwartungen ab. Mir persönlich liegen Geschichten am meisten, die sich in einem kurzen Zeitraum ereignen und in Facetten das Potenzial eines ganzen Lebens oder Romans aufscheinen lassen. Ein Gehoppel, das sich über wenige Seiten aber viele Jahre oder mehrere Monate mit etlichen chronologisch aufgezählten Episoden hinzieht, ist nicht so mein Ding; auch wenn die Schlusspointe so eine Art Bilanz zieht. „American Express“ oder „Fremde Küsten“ fallen in die bei mir unbeliebte Kategorie und bekamen auch nur zwei Sterne, zumal Salter in ihnen auch sprachlich nicht so auf der Höhe ist, wie in den Meisterwerken.
Fazit: Nachdem sein dünnster mir bekannter Roman die wenigsten Einbrüche hatte, versprach ich mir von den preisgekrönten Erzählungen eine Serie von Höhepunkten.
Tatsächlich ist Quote nicht besser als in den »Lichtjahren«, in denen das Dilemma dieses Autors am deutlichsten zu Tage tritt: Salter hat die Gabe gewisse Zusammenhänge über einige Seiten beeindruckend dicht und plausibel zu gestalten. Aber diese hochkonzentrierten Momente gelingen ihm nicht immer und es ist fraglich, ob ein Roman in dieser Dichte überhaupt erträglich wäre. Kommt er nicht auf dieses Niveau, fällt einem nicht nur der Abfall an literarischer Qualität aufs Lesergemüt, zumal er für die Überbrückungsetappen keinen leichteren oder beschleunigten Stil zur Verfügung hat. Der uninspirierte Salter erinnert mich eher an unverhoffte Querfeldeingänge über matschige Wiesen. Lästig so lange man sie hinter sich bringen muss, aber mit etwas Abstand überstrahlen die einzigartigen Höhepunkte, die eher unwillig verbrachten Lesestunden.

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book by a highly-respected, famous writer, and I couldn't at all get into it. This is the first book (stories) I've read by James Salter, and I'll likely not read any further ones. A lot of good ideas and some beautiful writing, but I can't see much "drawing together" of the characters or plot, or the full sense of his ideas. Dull, in essence. And I don't like his sentence structure, with multiple thoughts separated by commas: "The same cars were turning through the streets, he stepped among them." "He was wildly generous, he seemed to care nothing for money, it was crumpled in his pockets like wastepaper, when he paid for things it would fall on the floor." Anyway, not my favorite style.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

“His life did not turn out as he expected but he still thought of himself as special, as belonging to no one. In fact he thought of failure as romantic. It had almost been his goal.”

3.5 stars I really liked a few of the stories in here but overall didn’t adore the writing style and I felt like the rhythm of them all got repetitive, tho on a sentence level there were some fun and fresh structuring going on

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pure Salter. Come for the pure, compressed, evocative sentences, stay if you can stand the misogyny. Loved every one of these stories - except “Cinema,” which was a bit dull - almost all of which hover around perennial Salter obsessions: mortality and sex.

[Alejandro Salgado B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy buen libro de relatos, llenos de intimidad y detalles que abordan las complejidades de las relaciones humanas, las relaciones de pareja. No todos los cuentos me gustaron de igual forma, hay unos mejores que otros, pero en general es satisfactorio.