James Salter

James Salter (1925 – 2015) was a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Salter grew up in New York City and was a career officer and Air Force pilot until his mid-thirties, when the success of his first novel (The Hunters, 1957) led to a full-time writing career. Salter’s potent, lyrical prose earned him acclaim from critics, readers, and fellow novelists. His novel A Sport and a Pastime (1967) was hailed by the New York Times as “nearly perfect as any American fiction.”

Books in order of publication:

Novels

The Hunters (novel, 1957; revised and reissued, 1997)

The Arm of Flesh (novel, 1961; republished as Cassada, 2000)

A Sport and a Pastime (novel, 1967)

Light Years (novel, 1975)

Solo Faces (novel, 1979)

Burning the Days (memoir, 1997)

Cassada (novel, 2012)

All That Is (novel, 2013)

Screenplays

Downhill Racer (screenplay, 1969)

The Appointment (screenplay, 1969)

Three (screenplay, 1969; also directed)

Threshold (screenplay, 1981)

Essays and short stories

Dusk and Other Stories (short stories, 1988; PEN/Faulkner Award 1989)

Last Night (short stories, 2005)

There and Then: The Travel Writing of James Salter (essays, 2005)

“My Lord You” and “Palm Court” (2006)

“Odessa, Mon Amour” (2009) in Narrative Magazine

Collected Stories (2013)

“As Evening Falls” (2014) in Narrative Magazine

Don’t Save Anything (2017)

Other works

Still Such (poetry, 1988)

“Passionate Falsehoods”. Personal History. The New Yorker August 4, 1997.

Gods of Tin (compilation memoir, 2004; selections from The Hunters, Cassada, and Burning the Days)

Life Is Meals: A Food Lover’s Book of Days (with Kay Eldredge, 2006)

Memorable Days: The Selected Letters of James Salter and Robert Phelps (2010)