Dusk and other stories

Review by Booklist Review

None of these 11 stories is easy, for Salter's work is a prime example of the difficult pleasure of understatement in fiction, particularly in effective short-fiction. He must be read closely if one is to appreciate every nuance, every suggestion, every implication his rigorously controlled sentences deliver. He writes of the awareness of vulnerabilities, of people finally seeing them in themselves, making other people see theirs. His subjects are often Americans residing in Europe, where it seems their vulnerabilities catch on things easier and quicker. Endings are not tidy, and dialogue, while simple, is more symbolic of expression than a tool of realistic depiction. But these are fine, masterful pieces; they make the reader work hard, but they show, as a dividend, a keen sensitivity to the pungent stroke a honed short story can effect. BH.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Salter's elegant prose is ideally suited to the short story form. The author of five novels (A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years) here reaches a new height of grace and breathtaking virtuosity. His settings are evoked in perfectly chosen detail and his characters, almost all denizens of the most privileged class, are defined with the same unerring precision. In these 11 short narratives, Salter intentionally paints brilliantly sunny scenes of romance and luxurious comfort, only to reveal through his characters a darkening dusk brought on by doubt, emotional disarray and the vagaries of human imperfection. In ``Foreign Shores'' a pleasant Dutch au pair is slowly discovered to have ``the morals of a housefly'' by her embittered employer, who sees her little boy embrace the departing disgraced girl and comments, ``They always love sluts.'' In ``American Express'' two young hotshot lawyers travel through Europe seeking something that becomes impossible to define, much less find. In ``Fields at Dusk'' an attractive woman in her 40s confronts loneliness and loss: ``She was a woman who lived a certain life. She knew how to give dinner parties, take care of dogs, enter restaurants . . . . She was a woman who had read books, played golf, gone to weddings, whose legs were good, who had weathered storms, a fine woman whom no one now wanted.'' Salter is a fine writer working at the top of his form. (February 22) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

The title of Salter's new collection catches its mood so precisely that it comes as a surprise to find that there's no story called ``Dusk'' here. Salter's art is one of pastels, his melancholy so carefully modulated that it might have been handled by a decorator. The most successful story, ``Twenty Minutes,'' is also the most conventional: a rider fatally crushed by her horse in a fall relives her life. Salter's artful concision is marred only by his attendance to such upscale items as Navajo rugs and famous dinners. Other stories reduce to knowing catalogs of names, places (all the right ones), and sensations. Even a piece called ``Dirt'' is squeaky clean. Shouldn't pain be more painful? For large collections of contemporary American fiction.Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id . (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Salter (A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years, etc.) here brings together 11 stories, mostly from The Paris Review, Grand Street, and Esquire, for his first collection of short fiction. In the clear light of day, Salter's usually privileged characters seek fame and fortune, pleasure and passion with often reckless abandon and naked ambition. By twilight, their real and apparent failures begin to loom. At dusk, in ""Twenty Minutes,"" a divorced woman thrown from her horse reviews her failed marriage in a collage of near-death images. Again at dusk, in ""Fields of Dusk,"" a lonely middle-aged woman is told by her improbable beau that he's returned to his wife. Late at night, though, madness takes over and in the strange and haunting ""Akhnilo,"" a Dartmouth-educated carpenter who ""thought of failure as romantic"" seems to find it psychologically devastating. The pursuit of success naturally concerns Salter's artists: there is the pathetic American writer in self-imposed exile in Basel, where he dedicates himself to obscure ideas (""The Destruction of the Goetheanum""); there is the ""minor writer,"" in the rather unfocused and unpleasant ""Via Negativa,"" who envies the material successes of his contemporaries; there is the ambitious and awe-struck scriptwriter in ""The Cinema,"" a kaleidoscopic narrative of the making of a film in Rome. ""Am Strande von Tanger,"" a narrative with Proustian pretensions, follows a self-satisfied artist of sorts in Barcelona who (at a cafe called ""Chez Swann"") encourages the flirtations of his lover's friend, the latter a woman not of his style. The least obvious failures here are the wealthy young lawyers of""American Express,"" whose soullessness is fully revealed by their sexual depravity. Echoes of Hemingway (""There is no sun. There is only a white silence. Sunday morning. The early mornings of Spain"") do little to enhance Salter's own spare style, or his reputation as a writer's writer. The gems here lose some of their luster in the dull company. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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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. 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 to read. There is no sun. There is only a white silence. Sunday morning, the early morning 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. Excerpted from Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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