James Salter, the excellent writer who was a great favorite of other writers and knowing appreciators of exquisitely crafted sentences, is dead at age 90. HG never met Salter but HG feels he has lost a friend. Salter wrote novels, short stories, novellas, screenplays, criticism and much else. All wonderful. HG’s bedtime companion is a book he wrote with his wife, Kay: Life Is Meals: A Food Lover’s Book of Days. (HG did an appreciation of the book. Check the archive). It stands with A.J. Liebling’s “Between Meals” as an HG favorite work about dining — erudite and appetizing. Salter had a wit as dry as a flinty glass of Chablis. He once observed that most men have self delusions: That they look younger than they are. That they are good drivers. That they are good in bed. Thanks and farewell, James. HG thinks of you as a civilized companion whose works continue to delight and illuminate.
Leave a Reply