I’ve known the anxiety of being completely lost, flying, at night. It can be extreme. You’re travelling at close to five hundred miles an hour, and every minute that goes by takes you further into being lost unless you get help from ground radar somewhere or somehow figure out the error. If you maintain altitude, is it a safe altitude or should you climb? How long have you been lost? It doesn’t happen suddenly. It’s just suddenly recognized.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Sunday, June 28, 2015
James Salter / Peter Matthiessen
BY JAMES SALTER
APRIL 14, 2014
I met Peter Matthiessen sometime in the late nineteen-seventies. I had moved east from Colorado, or intended to, and we were introduced by a mutual friend. I had been at several Paris Review parties at George Plimpton’s in the years before that, but had never happened to meet Peter there. He was famous, not only as a founding editor of the Paris Review but as a writer. He wrote for The New Yorker and had won a National Book Award for “The Snow Leopard.” An earlier book, “Wildlife in America,” had established his reputation years before.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
James Salter / Bangkok
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Illustration by Simon Birch |
Bangkok
By James Salter
Hollis was in the back at a table piled with books and a space among them where he was writing when Carol came in.
Hello, she said.
Well, look who's here, he said coolly. Hello.
She was wearing a gray jersey sweater and a narrow skirt as always, dressed well.
Didn't you get my message? she asked.
Yes.
My hero / James Salter by Rupert Thomson
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James Salter |
My hero:
James Salter by Rupert Thomson
Salter’s gift as a writer was his way of conveying the ecstasy and transience of life in language that was simple and crystalline
Rupert Thomson
The Guardian, Saturday 27 June 2015 11.00 BST
When I met James Salter in London in the spring of 2013 I was struck by the way he walked. Though he was 87, there was the ghost of a swagger as he crossed the hotel lobby, and I had an immediate and vivid sense of him as a younger man – the pilot he once famously was, strolling across the runway to his F-86 fighter jet.
Though he acknowledged that flying was probably the great adventure of his life, he always longed to write, and while stationed in Germany in the early 1950s he happened to pick up a copy of Under Milk Wood. The language took his breath away, and he knew then that it was in him to make something “sacred and beautiful”. At the age of 32, he resigned his commission. He would “write or perish”. In his memoir, Burning the Days, he states that “a part of one’s never completed mosaic … is found abroad”, and his early novels – The Hunters, Solo Faces, and A Sport and a Pastime – reflect that belief. Perhaps because his subjects encompass war, sport and sex, he has sometimes been referred to as a macho writer, but he consistently demonstrated the ability to create believable women, an ability most evident in his 1975 masterpiece, Light Years, which paints a portrait of Viri and Nedra Berland and their gilded but ultimately doomed marriage.
It is the core of Salter’s gift, his way of conveying the ecstasy and transience of life in language that is simple, pure and crystalline, and yet he never reached a wide audience – at least, not until his last years. At the end of our meeting, I asked Salter what he felt about fame. He compared it to a white linen suit. “You’d give anything in the world to have it,” he told me, “and then somebody buys it for you and you don’t wear it very much.” It’s gratifying that after decades of longing and disappointment Salter was able finally to put on that white linen suit.
DE OTROS MUNDOS
Cuentos de James Salter
MESTER DE BREVERÍA
DRAGON
Short Stories
BIOGRAPHIES
RIMBAUD
Friday, June 26, 2015
James Salter / Am Strande von Tanger
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Mujeres en la playa, 1920 Pablo Picasso |
Am Strande von Tanger
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.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
James Salter / Last Night
Last Night
BY JAMES SALTER
NOVEMBER 18, 2002 ISSUE
Walter Such was a translator. He liked to write with a green fountain pen that he had a habit of raising in the air slightly after each sentence, almost as if his hand were a mechanical device. He could recite lines of Blok in Russian and then give Rilke’s translation of them in German, pointing out their beauty. He was a sociable but also sometimes prickly man, who stuttered a little at first and who lived with his wife in a manner they liked. But Marit, his wife, was ill.
He was sitting with Susanna, a family friend. Finally, they heard Marit on the stairs, and she came into the room. She was wearing a red silk dress in which she had always been seductive, with her loose breasts and sleek, dark hair. In the white wire baskets in her closet were stacks of folded clothes, underwear, sport things, nightgowns, the shoes jumbled beneath on the floor. Things she would never again need. Also jewelry, bracelets and necklaces, and a lacquer box with all her rings. She had looked through the lacquer box at length and picked several. She didn’t want her fingers, bony now, to be naked.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Abby Aguirre / Remembering James Salter
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James Salter with Sumo_Sagaponack, New York, 1984 Photo by Nancy Crampton |
Remembering James Salter
JUNE 20, 2015 9:26 PM
by ABBY AGUIRRE
The first James Salter story that got me was “Twenty Minutes.” I don’t know how to describe its effect for those who haven’t read it except to say that it works on the reader much like Salter himself wrote, “slowly, exactingly and, by almost every critic’s estimation, beautifully,” as today’s Times obituary put it.
The story is about a divorced woman who gets thrown from her horse. It is set in Carbondale, Colorado, a small town 30 miles downvalley from Aspen, “downvalley” and “upvalley” being the directions that matter most in the land of 14,000-foot peaks.
James Salter, Writer of Beautiful American Sentences, Has Died
James Salter, Writer of Beautiful American Sentences, Has Died
Another great writer I adored from the Paris Review has died
By Andy Bellin | 06/21/15 12:59am
Back in the mid 1990s I had Talented Mr. Ripley-ed my way into an editorial position at the Paris Review, George Plimpton’s vaunted literary magazine. I was a trained astrophysicist with absolutely no literary experience. I conned George into hiring me by claiming to possess the technological expertise necessary to teleport his magazine from the ice age of rotary phones and typewriters into the twenty-first century.
James Salter, a Writer's Writer, Dies at 90
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James Salter, 1975 |
James Salter, a ‘Writer’s Writer’ Short on Sales but Long on Acclaim, Dies at 90
By HELEN T. VERONGOS
JUNE 19, 2015
James Salter, whose intimately detailed novels and short stories kept a small but devoted audience in his thrall for more than half a century, died on Friday in Sag Harbor, N.Y. He was 90.
His wife, Kay Eldredge, confirmed his death, saying he had been at a physical therapy session. He lived in Bridgehampton, N.Y.
Mr. Salter wrote slowly, exactingly and, by almost every critic’s estimation, beautifully. Michael Dirda once observed in The Washington Post that “he can, when he wants, break your heart with a sentence.”
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
James Salter in The New Yorker
JUNE 20, 2015
The writer James Salter died on Friday in Sag Harbor, New York. He was ninety years old. Perhaps best known for his 1967 novel, “A Sport and a Pastime,” he had a reputation, as Nick Paumgarten wrote in a 2013 Profile of Salter, “as a writer’s writer, or, as John Ashbery once said of Elizabeth Bishop, a writer’s writer’s writer.”
James Salter dies at 90
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James Salter |
James Salter, author of A Sport and a Pastime, dies at 90
BY JENNIFER MAAS Posted June 19 2015 — 8:10 PM EDT
James Salter, the prize-winning author of Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime and All That Is, has died. He was 90.
His death was confirmed on Friday to The Associated Press by Alfred A. Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards.
Salter, never a big commercial success but admired by critics, wrote often on the topics of impermanence and mortality. He won the PEN/Faulkner prize for his 1988 collection Dusk and Other Stories and received both the Rea Award and the PEN/Malamud prize for lifetime achievement in short story writing.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Game of Thrones / Lena Headey's nude Walk of Shame body double speaks out
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Lena Heady as Cersei Lannister The Walk of Shame Game of Thrones |
Game of Thrones: Lena Headey's nude Walk of Shame body double speaks out
How The Walk of Shame was made: Actress breaks silence on their brave 3-day performance
BY JAMES HIBBERD
The body double who performed Game of Thrones’ Walk of Shame nude for three days is breaking her silence on enacting the stunning sequence.
Actress Rebecca Van Cleave (photo below) worked closely with star Lena Headey on the gripping penance walk in Sunday’s season 5 finale. While filming the Walk in Dubrovnik last October, Van Cleave performed nude while Headey wore a simple beige shift. The show’s visual effects team then merged the performances together—combining Headey’s progression of facial emotions during Cersei’s punishing hike to the Red Keep and Van Cleave’s physical movement echoing Headey’s body language in order to create the seamless illusion that Headey was completely bare for the sequence.
'Game of Thrones' nude body double Rebecca Van Cleave defends Lena Headey
'Game of Thrones' nude body double Rebecca Van Cleave defends Lena Headey
"I personally don't agree with anybody who says having a body double detracts from the scene," the 27-year-old tells Entertainment Weekly. "Lena put her heart and soul into that scene. It should all be about the finished product, not about whose body was where and and whose head was where."
Sunday, June 21, 2015
How to write like Joan Didion
HOW TO WRITE LIKE JOAN DIDION
MAY 22, 2015
The Key to writing like Joan Didion is to combine detailed, thorough description with a hint of biting irony. This primer is for both fiction writers and journalists who are struggling to make their work more interesting. Luckily, Didion can elevate the mundane and deflate illusions of grandeur, all in one essay. For this article, I will be using examples from her collected nonfiction, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.
Joan Didion was born in Sacramento, California in 1934, and has written many works of fiction and nonfiction the chronicle life in the state. She looked at the insanity of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, the rise of militant subcultures like the Black Panther Party and the Manson “family, as well as the intersection of bureaucracy, rebellion and politics. In her later years, her work has become far more personal, with books like The Year of Magical Thinking detailing the sudden death of her daughter and her husband. Didion was also associated with the “New Journalism” movement popularized by Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, but her style differs significantly from their work.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Joan Didion / The Art of Fiction
Joan Didion
The Art of Fiction
No. 71
Interviewed by Linda Kuehl
The Paris Review No. 74
Fall-Winter 1978

Friday, June 19, 2015
Joan Didion / Why I Write
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Joan Didion |
Why I Write
By Joan Didion
Of course I stole the title for this talk from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three short unambiguous words that share a sound, and the sound they share is this:
In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions—with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating—but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne Write Together

In Hollywood
by DURGA CHEW-BOSE
We’ve written twenty-three books between us and movies financed nineteen out of the twenty-three.
– John Gregory Dunne, The Paris Review, 1996
When he was done, the executive asked the writer, “Do you know what the monster is?” The writer shook his head. The executive said, “It’s our money.”
–John Gregory Dunne, Monster, 1997
The millennium is here, the era of “fewer and better” motion pictures, and what have we? We have fewer pictures, but not necessarily better pictures. Ask Hollywood why, and Hollywood resorts to murmuring about the monster. It has been, they say, impossible to work “honestly” in Hollywood.
–Joan Didion, I Can’t Get That Monster Out Of My Mind, 1964
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Why We’re Packing Our Bag Like Joan Didion Did in 1979
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Joan Didion |
Why We’re Packing Our Bag Like Joan Didion Did in 1979
by ALESSANDRA CODINHA|edited by KELLY CONNOR
Whether we admit it or not, whether we like it or not, we all wake up in the morning and want to look better. (Even your friends who claim to be above “trends” and “popular culture,” even they harbor some possibly secret desire tied to one basic truth: everyone gets dressed, and there is a method behind what we see.) Now, “better” doesn’t have to mean the same thing to all of us, but it means something, and more often than not, it means confident, appealing, attractive; the idea that we are wearing our clothes, our clothes are not wearing us. This is the power of style.
For Joan Didion, a style icon (both literary and sartorial, though the latter was never her aim) whose packing list was immortalized in the title essay of her beloved 1979 collection of essays, The White Album, it meant a sort of feminine armor, donned for the act of reporting in any variety of 1970’s Californian scenes. This was not a woman who wore a flak jacket (at least not in San Francisco), this was a woman who drove a Corvette Stingray, who hid her delicate bone-structure behind oversize sunglasses and who had early childhood dreams of wrapping herself in swathes of sable, who understood the telegraphed distinctions between different hem lengths and the mood-altering powers of several yards of theatrical yellow silk. This was a woman who was at one time a Vogue editor, for Pete’s sake. And this was the list that, for years, she kept taped inside her closet door, for when she had to leave town at a moment’s notice. So in the spirit of summer travels (whether for travels spent working or more pleasurably inclined), we’ve decided to take the iconic packing list for a spin—nothing too drastic, just a little update, and one we like to think that Didion would appreciate, if only for making some other young female professional’s life a little easier. (Not that she’s likely to ever admit it.)
TO PACK AND WEAR:
2 skirts
2 jerseys or leotards
1 pullover sweater
2 pair shoes
stockings
bra
nightgown, robe, slippers
cigarettes
bourbon
bag with: shampoo
toothbrush and paste
Basis soap, razor
deodorant
aspirin
prescriptions
Tampax
face cream
powder
baby oil
2 skirts
2 jerseys or leotards
1 pullover sweater
2 pair shoes
stockings
bra
nightgown, robe, slippers
cigarettes
bourbon
bag with: shampoo
toothbrush and paste
Basis soap, razor
deodorant
aspirin
prescriptions
Tampax
face cream
powder
baby oil
TO CARRY:
mohair throw
typewriter
2 legal pads and pens
files
house key
mohair throw
typewriter
2 legal pads and pens
files
house key
“This is a list which was taped inside my closet door in Hollywood during those years when I was reporting more or less steadily. The list enabled me to pack, without thinking, for any piece I was likely to do. Notice the deliberate anonymity of costume: in a skirt, a leotard, and stockings, I could pass on either side of the culture. Notice the mohair throw for trunk-line flights (i.e. no blankets) and for the motel room in which the air conditioning could not be turned off. Notice the bourbon for the same motel room. Notice the typewriter for the airport, coming home: the idea was to turn in the Hertz car, check in, find an empty bench, and start typing the day’s notes.”
—Joan Didion, “The White Album”
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