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James Salter: “Don’t Save Anything: Uncollected Essays, Articles, and Profiles”
By
Published: Nov 05, 2017
Category:
Non Fiction
I’ve written more about James Salter than any other writer.
My summing up: James Salter (1925-2015)
The cult classic: A Sport and a Pastime
The acknowledged masterpiece: Light Years
The best stories: Last Night
For food lovers: Life Is Meals
The last novel: All That Is
The memoir: Burning the Days
It usually happens that when a writer dies, the trustees of his estate swoop in, opening desk drawers and emptying boxes in search of unpublished masterpieces — or just one last payday.
And what they usually find diminishes that writer’s reputation.
James Salter’s post-death book is the exception.
Writing was a religion for Salter. “The act of writing, though often tedious, can produce extraordinary pleasure,” he wrote. “The pages on which the lines are written can be the most valuable things I will ever own.” So the meaning of title of “Don’t Save Anything,” a collection of essays, articles and profiles, is carpe diem — do your best, whether it’s the novel you hope will bring you immortality or a travel piece for a magazine that could go out of business before it publishes your thousand words.
These pieces are bundled by topics. Other writers. (Imagine a time when People would send a writer who’s not a household name to interview… Nabokov!) West Point, his alma mater. Men and Women. Competitive skiers. Mountain climbers. France. Aspen. Writing.
Entire sections may escape your interest. But you will be rewarded if you dip into those pieces as well, for no writer in the last half-century wrote a tighter sentence than James Salter. [To buy “Don’t Save Anything” from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Here are some gems from this collection.
On Frank Conroy: “Maggie had lain down with him for the final hours. There are not many people you would do that with.”
From a profile of a climber: “Molly Higgins is a lab technician in a hospital. She has blond hair and the decent American face of the girl in the emergency room who is there when your eyes open and you love her from then on.”
“Fellini had black hair growing out of his ears, like an unsuccessful uncle.”
“I liked her generosity and lack of morals — they seemed close to an ideal condition of living.”
Charlotte Rampling: “I was to learn many things about her: that she chewed wads of gum, had dirty hair, and, according to the costume woman, wore clothes that smelled. Also that she was frequently late, never apologized, and was short-tempered and mean.”
“There was wreckage all around, but it was like the refuse piled behind restaurants: I did not consider it — in front they were bowing and showing me to a table.”
On Nabokov: “The light is fading, there is no one else in the room or the room beyond. The hotel has many mirrors, some of them on doors, so it is like a house of illusion, part vision, part reflection, and rich with dreams.”
“The Romans planted quince trees to mark the corners of their fields.”
“Once we passed a big Alfa Romeo that she recognized as belonging to a friend, the chief of detectives in Rome. She had made love with him, of course. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘There’s no other way. Otherwise there would have been terrible trouble about my passport. It would have been impossible.’”
“To write of people thoroughly is to destroy them, use them up. I suppose this is true of experience as well—in describing a world, you extinguish it—and in any recollection much is reduced to ruin. Things are captured and at the same time drained of life, never to shimmer or give back light again.”
“There remains, though, in the case of those years in the movies, a kind of silky pollen that clings to the fingertips and brings back what was once pleasurable, too pleasurable, perhaps — the lights dancing on dark water, as in the old prints, the sound of voices, laughter, music, all faint, alluring, far off.”
And finally….
“There is something called the true life, which I cannot describe and which perhaps varies as one sees it from different angles and at different times. At one point it is travel, at another a certain woman, at another a house somewhere with a view you will worship till you die. It is a life apart from money and to the side of ambition, a life lived in one way or another for beauty. It does not last indefinitely, but the survivors are usually not poorer for it.”
You read lines like that with almost physical pleasure. And with pen in hand, marking, sometimes envious, always admiring.
BONUS: A RECIPE
From a New York Times article about eating in France.
“It was in the Guide Michelin that we found a restaurant, La Ripa Alta, in Plaisance, in southwestern France, one summer. It had been given a Michelin star, and the ranking was deserved. We had an excellent meal, and for dessert, figs, marvelously plump and tender, bathed in a smooth, faintly alcoholic liquid. When the owner and chef, Maurice Coscuella, came around to the tables afterward, we asked about the figs, how he had done them. The recipe was his own, he said, would we like it? I gave him a pair of drugstore eyeglasses I was reading the bill with in exchange.”
Figs in Whiskey
1 package dried figs, Turkish or Greek seem best
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups Scotch whiskey
Boil the figs for 20 minutes in about a quart of water in which the sugar has been dissolved. Allow to cool until tepid. Drain half the remaining water or a bit more and add the Scotch. Allow to steep a good while in a covered bowl before serving.
