[3]
By
Published: 2005
Category: Fiction [4]
Philip married Adele on a day in June. It was cloudy and the wind was blowing. Later the sun came out. It had been a while since Adele had married and she wore white: white pumps with low heels, a long white skirt that clung to her hips, a filmy blouse with a white bra underneath, and around her neck a string of freshwater pearls. They were married in her house, the one she'd gotten in the divorce. All her friends were there. She believed strongly in friendship. The room was crowded.
I don't want to turn this into a writing class, but that strikes me as virtuoso paragraph. Subject verb object. Subject verb object. Rich in nouns, sparse on adjectives. Clean. Indeed, pristine.
"Prose like a windowpane," said Orwell, who also wrote this way. The writer puts you in the room, lets you watch, doesn't get in your way. What the characters say and do matters --- the writer doesn't.
Who are these characters? White. Educated. Moneyed. "Philip was mannerly and elegant, his head held back a bit as he talked, as though you were a menu." And Adele? "Out of the afternoon haze she would appear, in her black bathing suit, limbs all tan, the brilliant sun behind her. She was the strong figure walking up the smooth sand from the sea, her legs, her wet swimmer's hair, the grace of her, all careless and unhurried."
But Salter doesn't dwell on happiness.
"He didn't make much money, as it turned out. He wrote for a business weekly. She earned nearly that much selling houses. She had begun to put on a little weight. This was a few years after they were married. She was still beautiful --- her face was --- but she had adopted a more comfortable outline."
Whew. That was fast. And efficient: "This was a few years after they were married."
Oh, there's liquor. You knew these people would drink, sometimes too much. Adele does. And says more than is discreet. Philip walks outside, sees a comet. Adele joins him. She has no interest in the comet. She goes inside. As he watches, she trips on the kitchen steps.
And that's all. Gossamer. You could say: "This isn't a story, it's a sketch." And you'd have a point. But the thing about Salter is that he shows you only what's needed, then invites you to imagine the rest. When I think of Salter, I'm reminded of John Updike's remark, "A psychoanalyst talking is like playing golf on the moon --- even a chip shot carries for miles." Salter hits chip shots.
Many will find this writing overly mannered. Yes, there are crumpled napkins on tables uncleared from last night's dinner party: "glasses still with dark remnant on them, coffee stains, and plates with bits of hardened Brie." Privileged women pine for love -- or sex. At a man's funeral, there are women the widow has never seen before. A married man is having an affair with a male friend. A hill is made from a pile of junked cars. A romantic opportunity is missed.
Salter is too discreet to shove the engine room of life into our faces, but it's very much there. One story ends with a woman dying of cancer --- a young woman. Another focuses on an older woman on what is to be the final night of her life: "She had a face now that was for the afterlife and those she would meet there." The sentences drop, regular as coins. Salter's cadences are so hypnotic it's easy to miss them. But they are arrows to the real subject of these stories, which are, like the best stories about adult men and women, about honor and love in the face of death.
"Last Night." 132 pages. Ten stories. They may read like trifles, like exercises, like parlor tricks --- but you can't forget them. Could it be because they are small masterpieces?