Джеймс Салтер: Жизнь и творчество американского писателя

American writer

James Arnold Horowitz (June 10, 1925 – June 19, 2015), better known as James Salter, his pen name and later adopted legal name, was an American novelist and short story writer. Originally a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, he resigned from the military in 1957 following the successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters. After a brief career in film writing and film directing, in 1979 Salter published the novel Solo Faces. He won numerous literary awards for his works, including belated recognition of works originally criticized at the time of their publication.

On June 10, 1925, Salter was born and named James Arnold Horowitz, the son of Mildred Scheff and George Horowitz. in his off duty time he wrote his first novel, The Hunters, publishing it in 1956 under the pen name "James Salter". The film rights to the novel allowed Salter to leave active duty with the US Air Force in 1957 to write full time. He also legally changed his name to Salter. The 1958 film adaptation, The Hunters starring Robert Mitchum, was honored with acclaim for its powerful performances, moving plot, and realistic portrayal of the Korean War. Although an excellent adaptation by Hollywood standards, it was very different from the original novel, which dealt with the slow self destruction of a 31 year old fighter pilot, who had once been thought a "hot shot" but who found only frustration in his first combat experience while others around him achieved glory, some of it perhaps invented. 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. Salter however, later disdained both of his "Air Force" novels as products of youth "not meriting much attention". After several years in the Air Force Reserve, he severed his military 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. Salter and his first wife Ann divorced in 1975, having had four children: daughters Allan (1955 1980) and Nina (born 1957), and twin sons Claude and James (born 1962). Starting in 1976 he lived with journalist and playwright Kay Eldredge. They had a son, Theo Salter, born in 1985, and Salter and Eldredge married in Paris in 1998. Eldredge and Salter co authored a book entitled Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days, in 2006.

His friend and fellow author, the Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford, said, "It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anybody writing today," in his Introduction to Light Years for Penguin Modern Classics. Michael Dirda of the Washington Post is reported to have said that with a single sentence, he could break one's heart. In an introduction to the final interview he gave before his death, Guernica described Salter as having "a good claim to being the greatest living American novelist". Writer Vivian Gornick had an altogether different take on his most recent writing. In her review of All That Is for Bookforum, she wrote "Certainly, it is true that most writers have only one story in them Then again, it is also true that it is the writer's obligation to make the story tell more the third or fourth time around than it did the first. For this reviewer, Salter's work fails on this score. In his eighties he is telling the story almost exactly as he told it in his forties." She also wrote that he was "so out of touch with the life we are actually living".

The Art of Fiction (2016), with an Introduction by John Casey. – the publisher states that "at age eighty nine, Salter served as the first Kapnick Writer in Residence at the University of Virginia, where he composed and delivered the three lectures presented in this book"
Don't Save Anything (2017). Assembled by his wife, contains a collection on non fiction writing.

James Salter's literature has been featured in the 2014 NSW Higher School Certificate. He is the subject of the closing section of Katie Roiphe's 2016 book The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End.