James Salter
Encyclopedia
James Salter is an American novelist and short-story writer. Once a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force
, he abandoned the military profession in 1957 after successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters
.
After a brief career at film writing and film directing, Salter became a "writer's writer" in 1979 with publication of the novel Solo Faces. He has won numerous literary awards for his works, including belated recognition of works originally rejected at the time of their publication.
, and among his classmates were Julian Beck
and William F. Buckley, Jr.
, while Jack Kerouac
attended during the 1939-40 academic year.
He is alternately said to have favored Stanford University
or MIT
as his choice of college, but entered West Point on July 15, 1942, at the urging of his alumnus father, Col. Louis G. Horowitz, who had gone back into the Corps of Engineers in July 1941 in anticipation of the war. Like his father, Horowitz attended West Point during a world war, when classes sizes were greatly increased and the curriculum drastically shortened (his father graduated in November 1918, after only 16 months in the academy, and with others of his Class of 1919 was called back after a month of duty to complete a post-graduate officer's course). Horowitz graduated in 1945 after just three years, ranked 49th in general merit in his class of 852. He was known among classmates as "Horrible" Horowitz.
He completed flight training during his first class year, with primary flight training at Pine Bluff, Arkansas
, and advanced training at Stewart Field, New York
. On a cross-country navigation flight in May 1945, his flight became scattered, and low on fuel, he mistook a railroad trestle
for a runway, crashlanding his T-6 Texan
training craft into a house in Great Barrington, Massachusetts
. Possibly as a result, he was assigned to multi-engine training in B-25s until February 1946, and received his first unit assignment with the 6th Troop Carrier Squadron
, stationed at Nielson Field
, the Philippines; Naha Air Base
, Okinawa; and Tachikawa Air Base, Japan
. He was promoted to 1st lieutenant in January 1947.
Salter was transferred in September 1947 at Hickam AFB, Hawaii
, then entered post-graduate studies at Georgetown University
in August 1948, receiving his master's degree
in January 1950. He was assigned to the headquarters of the Tactical Air Command
at Langley AFB, Virginia
, in March, where he remained until volunteering for assignment in the Korean War
. He arrived in Korea in February 1952 after transition training in the F-86 Sabre with the 75th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron
at Presque Isle Air Force Base
, Maine
. Horowitz was assigned to the 335th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing
, a renowned MiG
-hunting unit. He flew more than 100 combat missions between February 12 and August 6, 1952, and was credited with a MiG-15 victory July 4, 1952. He used his Korean experience for his first novel, The Hunters
(1956), which was made into a film
starring Robert Mitchum
in 1958.
The movie version of The Hunters was honored with much acclaim for its powerful performances, moving plot, and realistic portrayal of the Korean War. Although an excellent adaptation for Hollywood, it was very different from the original novel, which dealt with the slow self-destruction of a 31-year-old fighter pilot, who was once thought to be a "hot shot" but who found nothing but frustration in his first combat experience while others around him achieved glory, some of it perhaps invented.
He served twelve years in the U.S. Air Force, the last six as a fighter pilot, before leaving the military to pursue a writing career, a decision he found difficult because of his passion for flying. His works based on his Air Force experiences have a fatalistic tone: his protagonists, after struggling with conflicts between their reputations and self-perceptions, are killed in the performance of duties while inept antagonists within their own ranks soldier on. Salter paints a vivid and familiar picture for any military pilot who has survived aerial combat.
Salter was subsequently stationed in Germany and France, promoted to major, assigned to lead an aerial demonstration team, and became a squadron operations officer, in line to become a squadron commander. In his off-duty time he worked on his fiction, completing a manuscript that was eventually rejected by publishers, and another that became The Hunters. Despite the responsibilities of a spouse and two small children, he abruptly left active duty with the Air Force in 1957 to pursue his writing.
His 1961 novel The Arm of Flesh drew on his experiences flying with the 36th Fighter-Day Wing at Bitburg Air Base
, Germany, between 1954 and 1957. An extensively revised version of the novel was reissued in 2000 as Cassada. However, Salter himself later disdained both of his "Air Force" novels as products of youth "not meriting much attention." After several years in the Air Force Reserve, Salter severed his connection completely in 1961 by resigning his commission after his unit was called up to active duty for the Berlin Crisis
. He moved back to New York with his family, which included twins born in 1962, and legally changed his name to Salter.
in collaboration with television writer Lane Slate (Team, Team, Team). He also wrote for Hollywood, although disdainful of it. His last script, commissioned and then rejected by Robert Redford
, became his final novel, Solo Faces.
Widely regarded as one of the most artistic writers of modern American fiction, Salter himself is critical of his own work, having said that only his 1967 novel A Sport and a Pastime comes close to living up to his standards. Set in post-war France, A Sport and a Pastime is a piece of erotica
involving an American student and a young French girl, told as flashbacks in the present tense by an unnamed narrator who barely knows the student and who himself yearns for the girl, and who freely admits that most of his narration is fantasy.
Salter's prose shows the apparent influence of both Ernest Hemingway
and Henry Miller
, but in interviews with his biographer, William Dowie, he states that he was most influenced by André Gide
and Thomas Wolfe
. His writing is often described by reviewers as "succinct" or "compressed", with short sentences and sentence fragments, and switching between 1st and 3rd persons, and in the present and past tenses. His dialogue is attributed only enough to keep clear who is speaking but otherwise allows the reader to draw inferences from tone and motivation.
His memoir Burning the Days uses this prose style to chronicle the impact his experiences at West Point, in the Air Force, and as a celebrity pseudo-expatriate in Europe had on the way he viewed his life-style changes. Although it appears to celebrate numerous episodes of adultery
, Salter is in fact reflecting on what has transpired and the impressions of himself it has left, just as does his poignant reminiscence on the death of his daughter. A line from The Hunters expresses these feelings: "They knew nothing of the past and its holiness."
Salter published a collection of short stories, Dusk and Other Stories in 1988. The collection received the PEN/Faulkner Award, and one of its stories ("Twenty Minutes") became the basis for the 1996 film Boys
. He was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters
in 2000.
Salter and his first wife Ann divorced during his screen-writing period, after which he lived with journalist and playwright Kay Eldredge beginning in 1976. They had a son, Theo Salter, born in 1985, and married in Paris in 1998.
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
, he abandoned the military profession in 1957 after successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters
The Hunters (novel)
The Hunters is James Salter's debut novel about USAF fighter pilots during the Korean War, first published in 1956. The novel was the basis for a 1958 film by the same name starring Robert Mitchum and Robert Wagner with a very different storyline....
.
After a brief career at film writing and film directing, Salter became a "writer's writer" in 1979 with publication of the novel Solo Faces. He has won numerous literary awards for his works, including belated recognition of works originally rejected at the time of their publication.
Biography
Salter was born James Arnold Horowitz, the son of a moderately wealthy New Jersey real estate consultant/economist, on June 10, 1925. He attended the Horace Mann SchoolHorace Mann School
Horace Mann School is an independent college preparatory school in New York City, New York, United States founded in 1887 known for its rigorous course of studies. Horace Mann is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League, educating students from all across the New York tri-state area from...
, and among his classmates were Julian Beck
Julian Beck
Julian Beck was an American actor, director, poet, and painter.-Early life:Beck was born in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan in New York City, the son of Mabel Lucille , a teacher, and Irving Beck, a businessman. He briefly attended Yale University, but dropped out to pursue writing and...
and William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
, while Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
attended during the 1939-40 academic year.
He is alternately said to have favored Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
or MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
as his choice of college, but entered West Point on July 15, 1942, at the urging of his alumnus father, Col. Louis G. Horowitz, who had gone back into the Corps of Engineers in July 1941 in anticipation of the war. Like his father, Horowitz attended West Point during a world war, when classes sizes were greatly increased and the curriculum drastically shortened (his father graduated in November 1918, after only 16 months in the academy, and with others of his Class of 1919 was called back after a month of duty to complete a post-graduate officer's course). Horowitz graduated in 1945 after just three years, ranked 49th in general merit in his class of 852. He was known among classmates as "Horrible" Horowitz.
He completed flight training during his first class year, with primary flight training at Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Pine Bluff is the largest city and county seat of Jefferson County, Arkansas, United States. It is also the principal city of the Pine Bluff Metropolitan Statistical Area and part of the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Pine Bluff, Arkansas Combined Statistical Area...
, and advanced training at Stewart Field, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. On a cross-country navigation flight in May 1945, his flight became scattered, and low on fuel, he mistook a railroad trestle
Trestle
A trestle is a rigid frame used as a support, especially referring to a bridge composed of a number of short spans supported by such frames. In the context of trestle bridges, each supporting frame is generally referred to as a bent...
for a runway, crashlanding his T-6 Texan
North American T-6 Texan
The North American Aviation T-6 Texan was a single-engine advanced trainer aircraft used to train pilots of the United States Army Air Forces, United States Navy, Royal Air Force and other air forces of the British Commonwealth during World War II and into the 1950s...
training craft into a house in Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Great Barrington is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,104 at the 2010 census. Both a summer resort and home to Ski Butternut, Great Barrington includes the villages of Van...
. Possibly as a result, he was assigned to multi-engine training in B-25s until February 1946, and received his first unit assignment with the 6th Troop Carrier Squadron
6th Airlift Squadron
The 6th Airlift Squadron is part of the 305th Air Mobility Wing at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. It operates the C-17 Globemaster III supporting the United States Air Force global reach mission world wide...
, stationed at Nielson Field
Nielson Field
Nielson Field was the location of the Far East Air Force headquarters. Most of the aircraft of the FEAF were based at either Clark Field or Nichols Field.- Laurie Reuben Nielson :...
, the Philippines; Naha Air Base
Naha Air Base
Naha Air Base is an airbase of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. It was formerly under control of the United States Air Force. It is located at Naha Airport, Okinawa, Japan....
, Okinawa; and Tachikawa Air Base, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. He was promoted to 1st lieutenant in January 1947.
Salter was transferred in September 1947 at Hickam AFB, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
, then entered post-graduate studies at Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
in August 1948, receiving his master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in January 1950. He was assigned to the headquarters of the Tactical Air Command
Tactical Air Command
Tactical Air Command is an inactive United States Air Force organization. It was a Major Command of the United States Air Force, established on 21 March 1946 being headquartered at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia...
at Langley AFB, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, in March, where he remained until volunteering for assignment in the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. He arrived in Korea in February 1952 after transition training in the F-86 Sabre with the 75th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron
75th Fighter Squadron
The 75th Fighter Squadron ' is a United States Air Force unit. It is assigned to the 23d Fighter Group and stationed at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia....
at Presque Isle Air Force Base
Presque Isle Air Force Base
Presque Isle Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base, located in the city of Presque Isle, Maine.-History:Presque Isle Air Force Base was originally built in 1930 by the Civilian Conservation Corps as Presque Isle Airport, a commercial airport located west of the "business center."...
, Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
. Horowitz was assigned to the 335th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing
4th Fighter Wing
The 4th Fighter Wing is a United States Air Force unit assigned to the Air Combat Command Ninth Air Force. It is stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, where it is also the host unit....
, a renowned MiG
Mig
-Industry:*MiG, now Mikoyan, a Russian aircraft corporation, formerly the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau*Metal inert gas welding or MIG welding, a type of welding using an electric arc and a shielding gas-Business and finance:...
-hunting unit. He flew more than 100 combat missions between February 12 and August 6, 1952, and was credited with a MiG-15 victory July 4, 1952. He used his Korean experience for his first novel, The Hunters
The Hunters (novel)
The Hunters is James Salter's debut novel about USAF fighter pilots during the Korean War, first published in 1956. The novel was the basis for a 1958 film by the same name starring Robert Mitchum and Robert Wagner with a very different storyline....
(1956), which was made into a film
The Hunters (1958)
The Hunters is a 1958 feature film adapted from the novel The Hunters by James Salter. Produced by Dick Powell, it stars Robert Mitchum and Robert Wagner as two very different United States Air Force fighter pilots in the midst of the Korean War.-Plot:...
starring Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
in 1958.
The movie version of The Hunters was honored with much acclaim for its powerful performances, moving plot, and realistic portrayal of the Korean War. Although an excellent adaptation for Hollywood, it was very different from the original novel, which dealt with the slow self-destruction of a 31-year-old fighter pilot, who was once thought to be a "hot shot" but who found nothing but frustration in his first combat experience while others around him achieved glory, some of it perhaps invented.
He served twelve years in the U.S. Air Force, the last six as a fighter pilot, before leaving the military to pursue a writing career, a decision he found difficult because of his passion for flying. His works based on his Air Force experiences have a fatalistic tone: his protagonists, after struggling with conflicts between their reputations and self-perceptions, are killed in the performance of duties while inept antagonists within their own ranks soldier on. Salter paints a vivid and familiar picture for any military pilot who has survived aerial combat.
Salter was subsequently stationed in Germany and France, promoted to major, assigned to lead an aerial demonstration team, and became a squadron operations officer, in line to become a squadron commander. In his off-duty time he worked on his fiction, completing a manuscript that was eventually rejected by publishers, and another that became The Hunters. Despite the responsibilities of a spouse and two small children, he abruptly left active duty with the Air Force in 1957 to pursue his writing.
His 1961 novel The Arm of Flesh drew on his experiences flying with the 36th Fighter-Day Wing at Bitburg Air Base
Bitburg Air Base
Bitburg Airport is a commercial airport serving Bitburg, a city in the Rhineland-Palatinate state of Germany. It is located 2 miles southeast of Bitburg, 20 miles north of Trier, and 135 miles west of Wiesbaden....
, Germany, between 1954 and 1957. An extensively revised version of the novel was reissued in 2000 as Cassada. However, Salter himself later disdained both of his "Air Force" novels as products of youth "not meriting much attention." After several years in the Air Force Reserve, Salter severed his connection completely in 1961 by resigning his commission after his unit was called up to active duty for the Berlin Crisis
Berlin Crisis of 1961
The Berlin Crisis of 1961 was the last major politico-military European incident of the Cold War about the occupational status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of post–World War II Germany. The U.S.S.R...
. He moved back to New York with his family, which included twins born in 1962, and legally changed his name to Salter.
Writing career
Salter took up film writing, first as a writer of independent documentary films, winning a prize at the Venice Film FestivalVenice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
in collaboration with television writer Lane Slate (Team, Team, Team). He also wrote for Hollywood, although disdainful of it. His last script, commissioned and then rejected by Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
, became his final novel, Solo Faces.
Widely regarded as one of the most artistic writers of modern American fiction, Salter himself is critical of his own work, having said that only his 1967 novel A Sport and a Pastime comes close to living up to his standards. Set in post-war France, A Sport and a Pastime is a piece of erotica
Erotica
Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...
involving an American student and a young French girl, told as flashbacks in the present tense by an unnamed narrator who barely knows the student and who himself yearns for the girl, and who freely admits that most of his narration is fantasy.
Salter's prose shows the apparent influence of both Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
and Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, but in interviews with his biographer, William Dowie, he states that he was most influenced by André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
and Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
. His writing is often described by reviewers as "succinct" or "compressed", with short sentences and sentence fragments, and switching between 1st and 3rd persons, and in the present and past tenses. His dialogue is attributed only enough to keep clear who is speaking but otherwise allows the reader to draw inferences from tone and motivation.
His memoir Burning the Days uses this prose style to chronicle the impact his experiences at West Point, in the Air Force, and as a celebrity pseudo-expatriate in Europe had on the way he viewed his life-style changes. Although it appears to celebrate numerous episodes of adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
, Salter is in fact reflecting on what has transpired and the impressions of himself it has left, just as does his poignant reminiscence on the death of his daughter. A line from The Hunters expresses these feelings: "They knew nothing of the past and its holiness."
Salter published a collection of short stories, Dusk and Other Stories in 1988. The collection received the PEN/Faulkner Award, and one of its stories ("Twenty Minutes") became the basis for the 1996 film Boys
Boys (1996 film)
Boys is a 1996 American film starring Winona Ryder and Lukas Haas. The film was originally titled The Girl You Want. The film earned $516,350 in the United States box office. It is based on a short story called "Twenty Minutes" by James Salter....
. He was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society; its goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Located in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan in New York, it shares Audubon Terrace, its Beaux Arts campus on...
in 2000.
Salter and his first wife Ann divorced during his screen-writing period, after which he lived with journalist and playwright Kay Eldredge beginning in 1976. They had a son, Theo Salter, born in 1985, and married in Paris in 1998.
Works
- The HuntersThe Hunters (novel)The Hunters is James Salter's debut novel about USAF fighter pilots during the Korean War, first published in 1956. The novel was the basis for a 1958 film by the same name starring Robert Mitchum and Robert Wagner with a very different storyline....
(novel, 1957; revised and reissued, 1997) - The Arm of Flesh (novel, 1961; republished as Cassada, 2000)
- A Sport and a Pastime (novel, 1967)
- Downhill RacerDownhill RacerDownhill Racer is a 1969 film and the first to be directed by Michael Ritchie. A drama about ski racing, it stars Robert Redford and Gene Hackman.Tagline: How fast must a man go to get from where he's at?-Plot:...
(screenplay, 1969) - The Appointment (screenplay, 1969)
- Three (screenplay, 1969; also directed)
- Light Years (novel, 1975)
- Solo Faces (novel, 1979)
- Threshold (screenplay, 1981)
- Dusk and Other Stories (short stories, 1988; PEN/Faulkner Award 1989)
- Still Such (poetry, 1988)
- Burning the Days (memoir, 1997)
- Gods of Tin (compilation memoir, 2004; selections from The Hunters, Cassada, and Burning the Days)
- Last Night (short stories, 2005)
- There and Then: The Travel Writing of James Salter (essays, 2005)
- Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days (with wife Kay Eldredge, 2006)
- "My Lord You" and "Palm Court" (2006)
Additional reading
- Dowie, William, James Salter, 1998, Twayne Publishers, ISBN 0-8057-1604-1
External links
- Adam Begley, "A Few Well-Chosen Words", with an extensive biography through 1990
- David Bowman, "An officer and a gentleman", Salon.com, June 17, 2005
- Works, from Answers.comAnswers.comAnswers.com is an Internet-based knowledge exchange, which includes WikiAnswers, ReferenceAnswers, VideoAnswers, and five international language Q&A communities. The Answers.com domain name was purchased by Bill Gross and Henrik Jones at idealab in 1996. The domain name was acquired by NetShepard...
- Short biography and interview at Random House
- The Ransom Center Acquires James Salter Papers (includes a short biography)
- A conversation with author James Salter Interview w/ Charlie Rose, 19 September 1997.
- James Salter author page and article archive from The New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...