Burning the Days

"Below, the earth has shed its darkness. There is the silver of countless lakes and streams. The greatest things to be seen, the ancients wrote, are sun, star, water, and clouds. Here among them, of what is one thinking? I cannot remember but probably of nothing, of flying itself, the imperishability of it, the brilliance. You do not think about the fish in the great, winding river, thin as string, miles below, or the frogs in the glinting ponds, nor they of you; they know little of you, though once, just after takeoff, I saw the shadow of my plane skimming the dry grass like the wings of god and passing over, frozen by the noise, a hare two hundred feet below. That lone hare, I, the morning sun, and all that lay beyond it were for an instant joined, like an eclipse."

---James Salter. 

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Dear Roxana, 

I have mixed feelings about Salter. He is often described as a great "stylist" or "a writer's writer" and you soon realize that that can either mean that he is excellent or that he is superficial. I think the times we live in demands something grittier, writing shorn of embellishments, vast plots, too much interweaving...anything devoid of "the lyrical" and that manages to stay clear of the dreaded label:"a profound meditation". Or maybe that's just me...Tell it, but don't tell it slant...  

I started with his Light Years and, incidentally, read it on a plane. At the time his writing captivated me although it did seem a bit staged at times-but then again maybe all novels have that quality; as if one could see the scaffolding around, the blueprint of, the house. But no, it was dazzling. I don't want to go back to it. Let sleeping dogs lie.

Started A Sport and a Pastime which was billed as a racy novel. Gave up some thirty pages in. Then started Solo Faces which struck me as utter, utter rubbish. 

I may buy his new novel because he himself says in an interview that he was sick of being called a writer who could write "the perfect sentence". Let's see.

'“Forgiven” is not the right word. I think its lyricism has been accepted and understood in the context of the book.'
---James Salter.

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What do we remember: a sentence,a particular tone, a way of approaching, the build-up, the quality of the light during our reading, a picture, a gesture, the silent hours, the absorption, the forgetting of the world. Not the whole experience, no. There is no such thing. You can't look back and say to yourself: I remember my life, for much of what formed that has slipped away, irretrievably, into the darkness; much of that life was just a blank space even when it happened, or didn't happen, if you see what I'm saying. The 'unity of a life,' then? But we are not medievals any more, at least not for the most part.

'Peak moments'. The beginning, the end, the phrase which resonates, that arrests your attention. Already you have entered a dream, but now you open a door into another one...

It was nothing, a few light years, the smallness of life in the vastness of the unknown. The hierarchies of the soul displaced, the seasons rushing through you like a gust of rain in arid country. Clutch at it or let it pass. 

Look in the mirror, look askance: the strangeness of strangers, their essence like the strawness of straw. The beauty of distance holds its own, has its shadows. Is that all that connects us nowadays you ask?

~~~

“There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands. And yet, this pouring, this flood of encounters, struggles, dreams … one must be unthinking, like a tortoise. One must be resolute, blind. For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing the opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox. So that life is a matter of choices, each one final and of little consequence, like dropping stones into the sea."