All That Is, by James Salter- review

Some authors’ lives are a great deal more interesting than others — James Salter’s, for one. Born in 1925 and educated at West Point, a fighter pilot in Korea and afterwards in Cold War Europe, the chiselled flyboy soon jettisoned this for writing and became a cosmopolitan and a worldly adventurer. He made a film in the Alps with Robert Redford, and climbed at Chamonix to produce what was meant to be another film but became the novel Solo Faces. He had homes in Aspen and the Hamptons, frequented the parlours of Paris and Rome but was always, always, too reticent, and, by his code, too honour-bound to divulge all he had seen. Privacy — his own and others’ — was all.

Now, aged 87, he has written All That Is, his first novel since Solo Faces came out 34 years ago. One shouldn’t draw too much attention to that second number — 13 years ago he published Cassada, fully revised from a repudiated 1961 novel about fighter pilots. And not long before that, one of the great literary memoirs, Burning the Days, which he called a ‘recollection’, but which reads like a novel. There is nothing better in English about what it is like to fly — including combat flying.

There have also been two volumes ofshort stories, and accompanying the publication of this latest novel is the Collected Stories, introduced by John Banville. And some lighter fare: a book on meals written with his wife, and a collection of travel writing. All of Salter can be read in three days with no interruptions. No one should want to break the spell.