James Salter

James Salter was born in 1926 and raised in New York City. After graduating from West Point in 1945, he entered the U.S. Army Air Force and served as a fighter pilot, flying more than one hundred combat missions during the Korean war. Following the publication of his first novel in 1957, Salter resigned his commission. He has earned his living as a writer ever since. He is the father of four children and divides his time between Aspen, Colorado and Bridgehampton, New York.

Salter has written five novels: The Hunter (1957), The Arm of Flesh (1961), A Sport and a Pastime (1967), Light Years (1975), and Solo Faces (1979); the screenplay Downhill Racer; and Dusk and Other Stories, a collection of short fiction that won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1989. He has been awarded a grant from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Salter on Salter

Q. How would you describe yourself?
A. "Difficult. Tends to brevity. Seems to be interested in dogs, women, houses, cars, fields. Oddly enough, hasn't given up the feminine in himself" ("Fiction Prize Awarded," The Washington Post, April 30, 1989).

Q. How would you describe your literary style?
A. "I'm...someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible. Does that word in this sentence have any electric potential? Does it do anything? Too much electricity will make your reader's hair frizzy" ("James Salter, The Art of Fiction CXXXIII," interviewed by Edward Hirsch, The Paris Review, p. 59).

Q. I've read that the notion behind Light Years came from a remark by Jean Renoir.
A. "'The only things that are important in life are the things you remember.' Yes, I like that idea.... I wanted to compose a book of those things that one remembers in life. That was the notion. I suppose that the plot of the book is the passage of time and what it does to people and things" (Ibid, p. 81).

Photo © Sally Gall
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