A Sport and a Pastime

John Gardner analogized the novel to a dream. The author's job is to take the reader through the dream without the reader trying to skip ahead or wakeup. This novel is the perfect dream in that respect. I read these 185 pages in a breathless afternoon-evening.

Salter's prose has the high rhetorical style that reminds me of Wallace Stevens poetry. Any passage will do. The first describes the On The Road like character of the adventures of Philip Dean and Anne-Marie and sorrows of a post WWII France:

"At night they come to a strange, demode town, like a great sanitarium: Bagnoles. France is dotted with aging spas, their days of elegance long past, the damp hotels no longer filled, the voices vanished, the ceremonies of an idle life. They enter on curving road, past the silent lake. The buildings all seem empty. It's like a great estate, the master of which as disappeared. Still, it's kept open, it continues an existence exactly as if he were there. It's like an old letter, a suite in which an heiress has died."

The second passage is from the perspective of the unnamed, unreliable narrator:

Silence. A silence which comes over my life as well. I am not unwilling to express it. It is not the great squares of Europe that seem desolate to me, but the myriad small towns closed tight against the traveler, towns as still as the countryside itself. The shutters of the houses are all drawn. Only occasionally can one see the slimmest leak of light. The fields are becoming dark., the swallows shooting across them. I drive through these towns quickly. I am out of them before evening, before the neon of the cinemas comes on, before the lonely meals. I never spend the night.

I read another remark about being glad not to have read this book in school. I completely agree. The section men (see Franny and Zooey) and the feminists would destroy the dream. Salter riffs on other books like the Great Gatsby with the narrator as an older Nick Caraway who is a bit like Hubert Hubert. Much like Lolita there is a slight sickness to the whole thing, the voyeurism and vicarious living of the author.
The section men will point to the latent homoeroticism, the hero worship, the other books it draws from, maybe some cultural imperialism. David Foster Wallace would call this a prime example of the great male narcissists, whatever, so is killing yourself.

The sex is voyeuristic. Its not told from Philip's perspective, but the narrator's imagination. So it's not like some great romance. There should be shock and sickness too it. But it reflects contemporary preoccupations with reality TV, the lives of celebrities, and pornography. Salter's sex makes the reader seek refuge in Salter's beautiful description of the French country side, the changing of the seasons, and the skies.
The title of this 1967 novel comes from the Koran. It's a Stevens like attempt at a new secularism or Faulknerian use of a Bible verse to elevate the work. It's also a reminder that radical Islam didn't always exist.

1950’s France, an American middle-class college drop-out Philip Dean begins a love with a young French girl. But this sad, tender story of their erotic affair has been captured by a witness, a self-consciously unreliable narrator. This narrator freely admits that some of the observations are his own fantasy of the couple making A Sport and A Pastime an intensely carnal account of this affair and in part a feverish dream.

James Salter’s writing in this book is really interesting; he creates this wonderful imagery with the scenery, the colours, the smells and when it comes to the erotic side of this story this continues in a way that never felt crude or overdone. Sure the descriptions might feel really tame for our generation but there is a real lyrical way about the whole book that really worked for me. I will admit that I’ve not heard of James Salter before but I’m very impressed with his style that I would be curious to read more.

The relationship with Philip Dean and the French girl, Anne-Marie, is just wonderfully portrayed; there is no sense of love between the two, only raw passion. Anne-Marie has a healthy sexual appetite and she wasn’t afraid to tell him what she wanted which I find a little rare, especially considering the year this was written. While she feels like she is dominating at time, there are other times she feel really submissive and I think Salter did a wonderful job in getting that balance right.

The unreliable narrator was tricky to get used to; a friend of Philip’s from Yale, he was on holidays enjoying regional France but he seemed rather obsessed with this affair. You never quite know what is real and what is made up in his head, sometimes he will tell you but most of the time you are left wondering. It would be weird having a narrator standing beside the bed while you have sex so you have to assume that most of the sex is either his own fantasy or word of mouth.

I do like the way James Salter used this narrator to create this almost dreamlike story and I expect there is a lot more in the novel worth exploring. With a reread or two, I’m sure you will discover some interesting elements. I think Salter was trying to explore the emotions behind sex but sometimes that feels a little ambiguous; the tenderness, thrill, passion all come out rather clear but at times I thought there was an element of boredom and selfishness that was also coming out, just not as well.

A Sport and A Pastime is a wonderfully lyrical novel worth sinking your teeth into, the short sentences really give it a poetic feel throughout the whole book. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but I am glad I gave it a try. I have to wonder why James Salter never had commercial success, was it because he was a misogynist? His style reminds me a bit Steinbeck and Hemingway and yet he isn’t as popular as the two. I’m not sure if I would read much more in the erotic genre but I will have to check out some Henry Miller or Anaïs Nin in the future.

This review originally appeared on my blog; knowledgelost.org/2013/04/19/book-review-a-sport-and-a-pastime/