By Its Cover

To most people I come across as well controlled, a little inhibited, objective, not particularly emotional.  I appear not particularly touchy-feely, and I require a bit of a physical buffer zone between me and those around me. The few who know be well understand that the surface is not an accurate representation of what lies below. I’m actually intensely emotional, very sentimental, surprisingly (painfully) sensitive, expressive, and quite affectionate physically. Reconciling those differences is in effect my life’s work.

The writer that best depicts those contradictions for me is James Salter. A Sport and a Pastime is a favorite, so I had to get his latest novel, All That Is.  It’s vintage Salter; he’s at his best here.

The plot follows the male protagonist from WWII into the 1970’s.  He is a book editor, a conventional fellow in many ways, well-educated but not rebellious, knowledgeable but not erudite, smart but not brilliant. He follows society’s conventions pretty well, but his emotional side emerges in his relationships with women. There his feelings are intense, there he awakens to the full quotient of life’s possibilities, there he allows himself to obey the dictates of his innermost feelings.

Salter is often described as a writer’s writer. I’m no writer but I do appreciate his prose. Succinct, no extra words, no exaggerations, not poetic exactly (as in Banville, for example) but beautifully crafted, straightforward and to the point. There are many minor characters here, and many of those have back stories that are briefly but pointedly told.  They are more or less extraneous to the main plot line, but they are nonetheless fascinating. For example, Swangren is a small character, an aging writer of much fiction, some of it very successful. He has produced several books along the same lines, and he is still turning them out, even if his best days are behind him.

“Swangren had been born on a farm in eastern Ohio and had a farmer’s broad hands. In the Alleghenies, he said, they often had coal beneath their land, and after working all day, the farmers would go down to mine a little coal. As they dug underground they would leave staggered columns of coal, pillars, to support the roof, and when the vein finally ran out, they would retreat, mining the pillars as they went. Pulling pillars, they called it.

That was what he was doing at this stage, he said. Pulling pillars.”

Salter describes the attitude of most Americans at the time to the Vietnam War:

“Everything, during this time, was overshadowed by the war in Vietnam. The passions of the many against the war, especially the youth, were inflamed. There were the endless lists of the dead, the visible brutality, the many promises of victory that were never kept until the war seemed like some dissolute son who cannot ever be trusted or change but must always be take in.”

Salter’s assessment of the role of literature in the America of the 1970’s:

“The power of the novel in the nation’s culture had weakened. It had happened gradually. It was something everyone recognized and ignored. All went on exactly as before, that was the beauty of it. The glory had faded but fresh faces kept appearing, wanting to be part of it, to be in publishing which retained a suggestion of elegance like a pair of beautiful, bone-shined shoes owned by a bankrupt man. Those who had been in it for some years … were like nails driven long ago into a tree that then grew around them. They were part of it by now, embedded.”

The passages and many others give me much pleasure, and for me are reason alone to read Salter. Such insight compressed into lovely and uncontrived prose.

I fear that many women might have difficulties with Salter. His point of view is unrelentingly male. Sexuality plays a major role, and most of the female characters are traditionally passive. But Salter is far from Updike’s “penis with a thesaurus”, and he will not engender the offence and even rage that so many modern women feel toward Roth. Nonetheless they might not be in the best position to grasp his subtle blend of outward conventionality and underlying torrent of feeling. The patterns are so traditional, and perhaps so accurate and personal in nature, and if they probably wouldn’t offend the modern feminist, their beauty and relevance might just escape her notice entirely.

There is little tension in the plot itself.  The beauty is all in the precarious balance so carefully maintained (and occasionally lost) by the main character. Stay within the allowable boundaries. Don’t upset the current order. Fit in. But find an outlet for your inner feelings where you can. Sometimes beautiful, often messy, but necessary.

I hope to make more progress in reconciling my own contradictions. Year by year it does get a little easier. There’s less and less need to hide aspects of my personality. I find that the people that really matter to me have known all along. So much energy wasted in hiding, so much anxiety that didn’t have to be. In the meanwhile I do find it comforting to know that I’m not alone in facing such contradictions.