Backlisted - A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter

Episode Date: March 20, 2017

Andy & John are joined by literary agent Claire Conville and writer and author Rowan Pelling to discuss James Salter's 1967 novel of lust and imagination. The book, a description of an affair between an American college drop out and a French shop girl, has been acclaimed by critics as 'nearly perfect' and 'extraordinary'.Timings: (may differ due to adverts)5'08 - Rhapsody by Dorothy Edwards9'54 - The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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but I'd like you to think about this if you like us and what we do it is an opportunity to register your approval for it which is one thing but also as we all know the democratic process over the last year has taken a real bashing i like to think uh following the disasters of brexit and trump that here's an opportunity to show that the people can do the right thing once in a while so please uh feel free to um but i think you're only allowed to vote once and that's as it should be that's what we call integrity but um unless you have more one computer, in which case fill your boots. That's good to know. You're muddying the ground.

Anyway, so the message from Backlisted is basically work on your democratic deficit by voting for us. It is www.britishpodcastawards.com forward slash vote. And if you feel minded to do that, thank you. If you don't feel minded to do it, slightly smaller thank you. But we still hope you enjoy the next hour of chat coming up now. So on Tuesday I was up in Letchworth Garden City. I think I'm right in saying the first planned garden city in the UK. And do you know when it was built, Letchworth?

Is it the 30s? It may even be earlier than that, I think. I don't know. I'll tell you who would know. Yeah, go on. Me. Of course he would. Give us a small lecture.

But I think it... I was told that it's still owned by... The people. The same people. So it's kept, you know, in good shape. It was... I thought about moving to Letchworth. I absolutely loved it. Notwithstanding the fact that it's suffering the same kind of closed shops and everything else but there's a fantastic art deco cinema and theatre there there's David's bookshop and record shop which has been there

for decades which is where I did my talk the talk was sold out. It was great. Lovely people, enthusiastic, many of whom decided they would read War and Peace. So, yes, so Letchworth, let's all move to Letchworth. Let's do this podcast from David's Bookshop. David's Bookshop, if you're listening to this, we'd love to come and set up our gypsy caravan in your front room. We're getting quite a lot of requests from bookshops, which I think is something we definitely ought to think about doing. But I think it would be a really good thing to do in a bookshop. I would love to do that.

I would love to do that. I like the idea of that kind of 70s Ronnie Lane travelling circus set-up. But we're talking about old books, right? Old books, we got them. You don't have to be alive to be on Backlisted. Actually, it doesn't help. Oh, should we start? Why don't we? Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. You join us around the kitchen table at the slightly dilapidated rural French townhouse of our sponsors Unbound,

the website which brings authors and readers together to create fabulous books. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound. I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And joining us today is Claire Conville. Hello, Claire. Hello, hello, hello. Formerly an editor at Random House, Claire is a literary agent at Conville and Walsh. And we will be asking you questions. Searching questions.

Searching questions. Penetrating questions. About the craft of agency. And Claire is also co-curator of the Curious Arts Festival, which takes place in Hampshire in July. And this year has a line-up which includes Andrew O'Hagan, Tom O'Dell and Ed Byrne. Though not together at the same time. Or have you got a panel? No panel.

It's a good idea. We might set one up. I think so. So the book Claire's here to talk to us about is A Sport and a Pastime by the American writer James Salter. Now, this is one of those books that kind of looms large. Anybody who sort of reads American fiction in the 1960s, this is one of those tal that kind of looms large in... Anybody who sort of reads American fiction in the 1960s, this is one of those talismanic books. We'll come on to it in a moment, but it's mostly known for being

kind of the high-water mark of erotic writing, if there is such a thing. But we'll come on to it in a moment, because I have to ask, as is traditional on Backlisted... Is this podcast suitable for work? Yeah. Are we going to let this... It depends how much of the book we decide to read.

There are definitely some passages, but ripped, as they say, out of context, would they mean very much? Keep listening. You'll find out. Andy, what have you been reading this week? What have I been reading this week? So I've been reading a book of short stories by a Welsh writer called Dorothy Edwards.

So the thing about Dorothy Edwards was that she was born in Glamorgan in Wales. She was educated at a boys' school. She was permitted to do whatever she wanted when she was growing up by her extremely liberal parents. And then as soon as she left that world, she found it tremendously difficult to get along she starts writing stories and she is picked up by people like arnold bennett and he's introduced to virginia wolf duncan grant vanessa bell etc etc and sort of goes through a period where in the early 30s where she is considered amongst literary London

to be a tremendously exciting discovery, and then, very unfortunately, sort of behaves rather badly or in a rather uncouth way in several contexts and is dropped by that set. And on the morning of 6th January 1934, she burnt her letters and papers and threw herself under a train. A note was found in her pocket, which is thought to have read, I have received kindnesses from many people, but I have not really loved any human being.

So it's a very sad story. And her books were obscure, in fact, until the mid-1980s when both Rhapsody this book and Winter Sonata were reprinted by Virago as John just said and so this had been recommended to me several times it's a great favorite of writers like Niven Govindan and Dan Rhodes. It is in print, Rapsody, currently, from Parthian. There's a Library of Wales edition of this book. And she's one of those writers, those writers of short stories, who I would say perhaps has simultaneously something in common with someone like Catherine Mansfield,

yet at the same time is nothing like Catherine Mansfield. It's a very peculiar... It's like a cross between Catherine Mansfield and who's the same time is nothing like Catherine Mansfield. It's a very peculiar it's like a cross between Catherine Mansfield and who's the author of The Young Visitors? Daisy Ashford. So it has this peculiar mixture of naivety and sophistication. I'm just

going to read you the opening paragraph of a story called Days which I said on Twitter is sort of this is one sentence. It's almost the perfect short story in its own right. It's called David. Mr George Morn, the novelist, began to write about the people

and the scenes of the district around his old home only when he was already over 40. And almost as soon as he had begun to be recognised for these novels as a very great artist, it suddenly seemed to him that all he should ever want for the rest of his life would be to live among these old scenes, and he immediately bought a house a few miles from the house where he was born, and since then he has hardly been seen or heard of.

Brilliant. It's like a tiny, compressed story that's the beginning of a story. And the thing that all these stories have in common is that they all have the reason it's called Rhapsody, is they all have music, the beginning of a story and the thing that all these stories have in common is that they all have, the reason it's called Rhapsody is they all have music, the playing of music or listening to music in common but at the same time she writes in this fascinating way

I read somebody saying about her the sentences start in quite an orthodox way and then they spin off somewhere, you would never expect them to go and there's so much left unsaid between the characters their stories about music and i don't know heartbreak but they're funny at the same time so lovely to find the point is so lovely to find a writer hiding in plain sight

who's not really like anything else that you've read who once you've read it becomes that very strong i mean flavor do you know what i mean kind of um straight out of the you know backlisted i i i would be surprised if we didn't at some point do a whole episode about i i'm also slightly relieved to hear that she's not the Dorothy Edwards that wrote My Naughty Little Sister No, she's very much not that Dorothy Edwards Which for a while threw me a little bit when I looked at her, I googled her

I thought, this can't be this just doesn't sound like Annie She was also the Dorothy Edwards who was one of the team that produced Listen With Mother Not that Dorothy Edwards The same So I hope we come back, and the point is I'm sort of making an open plea here that we maybe one of the team that produced Listen With Mother. Not that Dorothy Edwards. No, it's the same. So I hope we come back.

And the point is I'm sort of making an open plea here that we maybe come back to Dorothy Edwards because I think there's loads more to say about her. Well, we'll obviously have to pass it to the committee, but I think it sounds great. So, yes, the committee. What, John, meanwhile, have you been reading? Well, I found an amazing first-hand account of a shepherd... No.

No shepherds this week. Shepherd-free week. But what I have been reading is, I think, a beautiful... I mean, really beautiful collection of short stories by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Vietnamese, American-Vietnamese writer who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for his remarkable kind of experimental novel,

The Sympathizer. But this is a collection of eight stories called The Refugees. And it's interesting. It's been interesting reading it at the same time as Salter because he writes almost in that kind of classic American short story way, but about experiences which take you right outside

the narrow kind of middle America experience. It's about people who are largely coming to America, not all of them, not all of them. Each story is almost like, if you were going to explain the refugee experience, you're going to explain what it feels like to be in a foreign land with a different culture and a different tongue and how you have to assimilate yourself.

But it's done with such fictional kind of intelligence each story that the opening story which is called the black eyed woman is about a ghost writer she's a Vietnamese girl who came over on a boat has become a ghost writer and is visited by the ghost of her dead brother and it's a it's a it's just a beautifully worked story about how she loves her work because she can erase herself. And in a way, her whole life has been erased. And then she has the conversation with her brother, who was obviously a ghost, but he spent the last 15 years swimming across the oceans to get to her,

to deliver this story to her. And she is forced for the first time to revisit that voyage, I mean, the nightmarish voyage where she was, obviously her brother was killed, thrown overboard. So there's that story. There's another remarkable story about the main character, who is a Spaniard, who has had a transplant, a liver transplant, and he gets in touch with the person who's given his transplant,

who is a Vietnamese guy, and they form a friendship. And without giving the story away, it's just a brilliant idea. He has a bit of Vietnamese inside him, and he ends up going out and they have delicious food, and the guy is a young, hustling Vietnamese kind of entrepreneur. There's this brilliant twist at the end of the story, which I won't tell you. But Nguyen's skill, I think, is to give these stories, to write them, you know, at no point, the prose is so exquisite,

that it's total control in that way that you get, I think, with very, it's very rare with any writer, but it's a beautifully constructed, each story in a way, the eight kind of form a sort of perfectly balanced form of analysis. But it's that thing, you know, you're always expecting, I guess the idea of refugees and the background, the political background of this, you might pick it up with a slightly heavy heart thinking you're going expecting, I guess, the idea of refugees and the background, the political background of this. You might pick it up with a slightly heavy heart,

thinking you're going to be lectured at. But this is just brilliant. Top of your game fiction. So can we repeat, who's this? What's it called? It's called The Refugees, and it's by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Now, so that's a book of short stories. Dorothy, that's a book of short stories.

James Salter, famous for writing short stories. I read out an entire short story by George Saunders on the last episode of Backlisted. Claire, as an agent, when your client... I remember from my publishing days, when your client says to you, good news, my next book is short stories, what are the challenges that you have?

Well, I'm a great believer in supporting my writers and what they want to do so if they say i want to write a collection of short stories then they can write a collection of short stories but probably i have to perhaps prepare them to be a little bit realistic about what they can expect in terms of a publisher's response, a level of advance and finding an audience for those stories. But, funnily enough, it will come on to it. Sarah Hall, who has done this very brilliant introduction to A Sport and a Pastime, which is what we're here to discuss, manages to combine wonderful book or shortlisted novels

with collections of short stories, and that's almost the perfect way to way to do to achieve uh her goals as a an artist and writer if you can do the both that's brilliant however of course there are people who are brilliant and their form is the short story and i'm thinking of alice monroe in particular but the is, here's the thing I mean we probably read more short stories as a result of you know being writing and publishing

and book selling folk but the public appetite for short stories is it small? I think publishers need to be really savvy about it because I think, actually, a lot of people are turning towards audio,

a lot of people are using different mediums to read and experience books. And I think the short story is a perfect form, you know, if you want to kind of be on the tube or you want to be walking into work or you want something that you can slip into and it's 10 minutes, 15 minutes, as opposed to sort of three

days of intense reading. So I think the short story with some thought and care and some canny marketing could yet find its place. Well and also going back as we will time and again over the next few months I suspect, we're going back to George Saunders again. You know the fact is George Saunders

is in his late 50s, he's just published his first novel which is going to be massive and is brilliant. We talked about it last time. But he has built a career on 20 years worth of writing short stories and essays. And his books have been,

you know, they sell very well and they're very well published. You don't think of them as being... I mean, I would say that he was a cult, really, he was a cult, really, he was a cult writer until his last collection, which then hit the New York Times bestseller list. I think that transformed his profile internationally.

I think he's brilliant and highly original and very left field. But that's the interesting thing about publishing. You have these books that suddenly become phenomenal. And at the end of the day, you don't necessarily know why. I mean, you can praise them for their qualities. You can love them for their writing. But what turns a book of short stories that might sell 5,000 copies

to selling 800,000 copies? You know, who knows? That's what's so great. I mean, I always think that's what's so great about it. In fact, that if we knew what did that, it would be a much more boring industry to work in. It's a vexed question, it always will be. But, you know, if you're sitting inside a commercial fiction house,

I remember there was always the pressure it needs to be longer, it needs to be fatter it needs to be longer, people need to feel that this is an investment in time that they're going to make with a set of characters it's going to have a beginning, a middle and end short stories you know I've read short stories that are

in a way as epic as big fat commercial novels but they do it with a concision and they do it with language and they do it I mean you know I think if you're what we talk about when we talk about love is there's a whole I mean Carver has

captured in an epic way as much as anyone else the greatest if there is such a thing as a great American novel I think it's there in those two or three great Carver collections but I suppose it's a sort of a weird marketing issue isn't it it's just if you

and I guess what people want when they read on, where do people read fiction who are the people who read fiction as a sort of as a way of other than entertainment on a beach read, who are the people who read fiction as a way of, other than entertainment on a beach read, who are the people who read it to illuminate and inform the way they live their lives? And we know there are plenty of them out there

because they come to literary festivals and they go and they listen and I think they will buy stories. But we were talking about Maxwell a lot, obviously, because, first of all we had kit devol with us to talk about william maxwell um talk about so long see you tomorrow and then we read a story which david miller really loved uh called love very short short story by william maxwell and actually john what you were saying about carver there really struck me i i've thought so much about those maxwell

short stories since i read them about how much there is inside them uh you know the one by the river one which is a novel i mean it's because there's there's so but i guess that i don't know that there's something about a story isn't it that you tend not to get digressions you tend not to have you know a story doesn't just suddenly leap into the mind of another character. I mean, it does happen, but you can feel that you're being... In a way, you're being pushed towards a conclusion in a way that isn't the same. Novels can be baggy and complex.

I mean, I'm reading The Saunders at the moment and loving it, but it ain't a short story. No. It likes to wander. Well, Salter, of course, James Salter, who we're here to talk about. Salter, as it says on the front of my copy of the collected stories here, a master of the great American short story. A master storyteller, if you will and then there's

a couple of stories in here that later on i might talk about a little bit because actually i thought they were phenomenally good um and and i should like yeah and i should little masterpieces i should declare an interest i was i was at harville when we published his fabulous, in my view, memoir, Burning the Days. And we also reissued A Sport and a Pastime. And you did Light Years as well. I think that was also reissued, yeah. We'll be back in just a sec. A Sport and a Pastime I hadn't read for 20 years, and going back to it was really fascinating

because it was both better in some levels and not as good on other levels as I'd remembered, which is what you'd expect from a book. But I still come as a massive Salter fan. We should say that A Sport in the Past Time, as Claire just said, has just been reissued by Picador as a Picador classic with a new introduction by Sarah Hall. Paul Bagley, who is the publisher of Picador,

is a massive Salter fan as well. Massive is obviously my word of the podcast. Indeed he is. And he was at Havel both when we published Burning the Days and reissued. So Claire, when did you first run into either Salter or this book? Or both? So, in fact, my beloved author Sarah Hall was the person who introduced me to James Salter,

and she's been a massive fan of his work for many years, and indeed met him, I think, and he was a great supporter of her work. And she, you know, really encouraged me to read him, and I started with Light Years which I would say which I say I enjoyed but not as perhaps

as much as I thought I might but anyway I enjoyed it and in my spare time among many other things I host a book club at the Society bookshop in Soho and we decided we would read A Sport and a Pastime.

So I've come fresh from that book club, where about 20 people shared their views. When was that? That was on Monday. Oh, OK. Ringing with those. Ringing with a very interesting and quite complex response to the book. Just tell us about,

you were talking to me about the book club earlier. The book club sounds really interesting. So you choose what kind of books? So we choose collectively, because we're in Soho and because we didn't want to do the normal sort of Richard and Judy choices, we decided that we would only choose books that were either transgressive or compulsive or both. And by transgressive, it didn't have to be sexually or emotionally transgressive.

It could be stylistically transgressive in its own way, too. So we've done a really interesting collection of books. What have you done? We've done Therese McCann. We've done The Haunting of Hill House. We've done By Grand Central Station, I Sat Down and Wept. We've done The Lover, and the list goes on. And our next book actually is going to be Master of Margarita.

So it's an unusual collection, and we have anything from 20 to 40 people turn up. And my job is to ensure that everyone feels engaged and can take part and offer their very, often very interesting and rather complicated responses to the different books it sounds brilliant so anyway so you did um your group did a sport in the past time by james salter on monday how did it go it went very well most people absolutely loved it there was debate about whether it was a masterpiece or whether it was just a really good book.

A minor piece. It was a minor piece, yes, perfect. But what was interesting, some very nice friends of mine called Anne and her daughter Emma come, and Emma picked it up a week or so ago, read 15 pages and hurled it across the room and said, I think this is absolutely ghastly and I don't want to read another word.

At which point her mother picked up the book, sat down and just read it all the way through and said, this is one of the best books I've ever read. So we have very extreme views. Brilliant, even within the same family. Even within the same family. Well, I think that might be the key to this little old minor piece.

Speaking of somebody who read it when I was younger. So had you, so you, just to recap, so that was your, so you read this for the first time quite recently, right? Yeah. Okay. And I have to read it twice, really, before we do the book, just so I can be sort of properly on my toes on it. And I was swept away by it in one sense.

I thought that that love affair with France was sort of incredibly evocative and beautiful. And as a child of the 60s, I remember that very well, that France was beautiful and stylish and the food was wonderful. And we used to go on the ferry in the old car and sort of stop in restaurants.

And it just felt like another world. So I loved that aspect of the book very much. the old car and sort of stop in restaurants and it was just felt like another world so i loved that aspect of the book very much um and i think i was um i mean the structure is very clever i think the relationship with the narrator and the two central characters obviously is lots to think about and talk about whether Whether I think it's a masterpiece, I would be cautious about saying that. And also, given that it is classed as a great piece of erotic fiction, I didn't particularly find it hugely erotic.

You know, the thing is, I'm glad you said that, because I have to say, I've read this book, I've slightly, in some respects, not in all respects, some respects I've slightly dreaded talking about it, because I have to say, I feel like I'm confessing something by saying it didn't do much for me either. I was more, how can I put this, more bored than I was... Titillated. Titillated, yes, absolutely.

But I agree with you, Claire, that particularly the first 50 pages are superb. I mean, superbly written. We should read just a little bit. John, do you want to? Have you got a bit that you want to read? Well, I just wanted to say, before we get on, because I think you can't talk about this book without talking about sex, but there are other things you can talk about

France, you already mentioned, food, travel Well food is very important in the book but I suppose I would say what I would say before I'm going to end the reading but I didn't find it to say to you but it felt like a love affair to me rather than an erotic journey I agree

I'm putting my cards on the table early which is I think it is it is the most perfectly realised presentation of the kind of relationship, sexual relationship you have in your 20s when you don't really know who you are or where exactly you're going. Or what you want. where exactly you're going because this is what you want or what you want and it's it's one of those books that actually i realized that there was a lot more going on in this book when i first read it which i suppose i would have been a lifetime in about nearly four children ago i i didn't really i don't think i i don't really think I understood the sadness of it.

And there's a brilliant... Somebody says that everything you need, the themes that Salter writes about are basically sex and women, valour and sadness. And I think there's sort of all of that in this book. But we should say that, as Andy said, I think the thing is anybody who's interested in

writing, just in writing purely as, you know, if you want I'm in a French hotel room and I'm looking out of the window. How can I communicate that? Let me read this part because that's exactly there's two things in this section which relate to what we've just been talking about.

I'm awake before dawn, 5.45, the bells striking three times, far off, and then a moment later, very near. The most devout moments of my life have been spent in bed at night listening to those bells. They flood over me, drawing me out of myself. I know where I am suddenly, part of this town and happy. I lean out of the window and am washed by the cool air, air it seems no one has yet breathed.

Three boys on motorbikes going by, almost holding hands. And then the pure melancholy, first blue of morning begins. The air one can bathe in, the electric shriek of a train, heels on the sidewalk, the first birds. I cannot sleep. I stand in line in the shops, no one notices. The girls are moving back and forth behind the counters, girls with white faces, with ankles white as soap, worn shoes going at the outside toe, dresses showing beneath the white smocks. Their fingernails are short.

In the winter, their cheeks will be splotched with red. Monsieur? They wait for me to speak, and of course it all vanishes then. They know I'm a foreigner. These are notes to photographs of Autun. It would be better to say that they began as notes but became something else, a description of what I conceived to be events. They were meant for me alone, but I no longer hide them.

Those times are past. None of this is true. I've said Autun, but it could easily have been Auxerre. I'm sure you'll come to realise that. I am only putting down details which entered me, fragments that were able to part my flesh. It's a story of things that never existed, although even the faintest doubt of that, the smallest possibility, plunges everything into darkness. I only want whoever reads this to be as resigned as I am. There's enough passion

in the world already. Everything trembles with it. Not that I believe it shouldn't exist, no, no. But this is only a thin, reflecting sliver, which somehow keeps catching the light. Well, the good news is that that was a bit I was going to read. Was it?

Was it? There you go, because it's so good. It's so good. And that's the thing you have to say about Salter is he is, I think, Raymond. Raymond? Richard Forte, you know, sentence for sentence. He's the best, isn't he? He's the best American writer of his generation.

I mean, the thing about it is which is what I guess we're going to talk about maybe we should go to blurb well I want to lob this in before we go to blurb which is simply you said we've been talking about the phrase he's the writer's writer

now the phrase the writer's writer reminds me of a thing that Stuart Lee says about being called the comedian's comedian. What he says that means is it's a backhanded compliment saying only other comedians find you funny. And I've... Perhaps more practically,

your books don't sell. And in this case it's probably true, right? The truth about Salter is that his books have never sold to the degree in which the esteem to which he's held. Yeah. And that is sort of what I've been trying to grapple with

when I've been reading and rereading this stuff, because everything, in a way, is there, but there is something really odd missing, and I'm not quite sure what that is. For me, I tell you what, I think the beauty of the prose, it's rather like a very charming man, deflects you as much as it invites you in.

And I think that is kind of one of the features of the writer. So it's incredibly beautiful prose. It's the sentence construction, the imagery, that sense of on the sentence construction, the imagery, that sense of on the train, in the car, that flowing through this book as France rushes past you. But I feel sometimes we don't drop deep. There's a very interesting... His Paris Review interview is very good.

There it is. But he talks in that i have this quote here about where he's talking about i think claire i feel with the prose sometimes there's a sense of him admiring his own prose perhaps too much and it can be slightly can hold you at arm's length as you say and he says this about it they ask and they say to him what what is it paragraphs that work for you or sentences work for you which is a similar question to that they the parish review puts a william maxwell in fact and salter says i'm a frotteur 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 there's a question of pacing you want short sentences and long sentences. Well, every writer knows that. You have to develop a certain ease of delivery and make your writing agreeable to read. And the thing about that is, I think in the section that we just heard there, there is a sort of rhythmic sensibility to that. As I was reading it, I was thinking, as this goes on, this accum accumulates in a really sophisticated way it accumulates both in sound and in imagery you know he's um okay he's a writer who is obsessed with food okay he's a he's a connoisseur he's a he's a gourmand and just wanted to read this from from uh the the i mean it is extraordinary memoir and well i mean he's also a pilot okay so yeah so he's a man who spends a lot of his time on his own you know suspended in space

you know he writes more brilliantly than almost anyone since saint-luc-sperre i think about that about that freedom and being above the earth and looking down so this is what he says about um about the book it was my ambition to write something i had some stumbled across the words this is from lawker in fact i'd stumbled across the words lubricate y pura licentious yet pure an immaculate book filled with images of an unchaste world more desirable than our own a book that would cling to one and could not be brushed away and then he goes on to say during his writing i felt great assurance but i think that idea of trying to create something that is perfect and and jewel-like um even though obviously they know the characters are are described i mean they're of the very of

the world particularly particularly anne mar, the girl of the book. I mean, I think there's something in the end that defeats your ability to... defeats your empathy. I think maybe that's what you're saying, that you kind of can't quite... Philip Dean, who's kind of the main character, is a bit of a dick.

Yeah, but I think that's... You know, you can write great novels about idiots, but maybe the only reason I wanted to blurb, because I think you can't get to the heart of this book unless you... The blurb will do as the Picador one. It's the way they're presented that makes the book really interesting, but also problematic.

So here's the blurb from the Picador Classics Edition. Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discoloured a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit. In 1960s France, two men meet and become friends. One of them is Philip Dean, a footloose Yale dropout, arrived to tour provincial France and Paris in a borrowed, once elegant car. When Dean meets Anne-Marie, a young shop girl, they begin a feverish love affair. The other man, our unnamed narrator, can only look on,

tell their story, and imagine their sensual paradise. First published in 1967, A Sport and a Pastime established James Salter's reputation as one of the finest writers of his time. And this book is an undisputed modern classic. Remarkable both for its eroticism and its luminous prose, it is a novel that explores the boundaries between what is dreamt and what is lived, between body and soul. And then we have Slender, Cynical and Bruisingly Sexy, Exquisite, The Daily Telegraph, and As Lolita is a kind of Valentine to Nabokov's adopted, gorgeously vulgar America, so A Sport and a Pastime is a Valentine to Salter's France,

by no less than Joyce Carol Oates. Anyway, so the point about this book, in a way, is that it's not, you're not in the head of Philip Dean and you're not in the head of Anne-Marie, you're in the head of the unnamed narrator. Well, you are and you aren't, I think, because what I think one of the very interesting stylistic things about the book is that our narrator sometimes enters the space with them. It's almost as if he's disassociated

and he's looking down at them from a great height. So he's both there and not there. And again, in the Paris Review interview, he describes it as being like a narrator on stage. He's moving everybody around. Yes, that's right. He's not actually active in the space. But he also says about that narrator,

now the narrator has that kind of Nick Carraway, Great Gatsby element to him, but he also, they ask him, they say there's a post-modern side to the book, the narrator indicates that he's inventing Dean and Anne-Marie out of his own inadequacies. You know what Salter said?

I found this fascinating. He said, that's just camouflage. He said the book would have been difficult to write in the first person. That is to say, if it were Dean's voice, it would be quite interesting written from Anne Marie's voice, but I wouldn't know how to attempt that. On the other hand, if it were in the third person, the historic third, so to speak, it would be a little disturbing because of the explicitness and the sexual descriptions. The question was how to paint

this, more or less. I don't recall how it came to me, but the idea of having a third person describe it, somebody who's really not an important part of the book, but merely serving as an intermediary between the book and the reader, was perhaps the thing that was going to make it possible, and consequently I did that. I don't know who this narrator is. You could say it's me. Well, possibly, but truly there is no such person.

He's a device. He's like the figure in black that moves the furniture in a play. You know, I find that fascinating. Or a porn director, maybe. But the idea that he was willing to say, well, that's what I had to do. The narrator needs to be a blank in some ways just to distance you from what's happening in the book.

Yeah, I mean, the book book club one of the sort of premises was that actually he's all three that he's both male and male female and narrator and um uh i felt that was a credible idea actually yes that's fascinating there are all aspects of who he is. We have got a clip of Salter talking to Richard Ford about the publisher's response to A Sport in the Past Time when he first handed it in. So we're just going to have a listen to that now. A Sport in the Past Time, I had written and submitted, not to George first, but to my previous publisher, and then to

another publisher. They turned it down. And through a friend who was sent to George in that very tight pages. I've told this before. He called up and he said, the book is wonderful. He had kind of... You know he had that special way of talking. He said, the book is wonderful. He had kind of, you know, he had that special way of talking. He said, the book is wonderful. It's just that I love it. I like to publish it. But no good book is written in the first person, he said. No really good book.

And I couldn't think of an answer to that, of course. I couldn't think of really good book. And I couldn't think of an answer to that of course. I couldn't think of a good book. The only thing I could think of was All Quiet on the Western Front, which was an early book I had read and I knew the first line of. I said, what about that? He said, you're right. And that was all the editing that was done actually. The book was not edited. So now we have a

backlisted first where Claire you have something that you want to say about A Sport and a Pastime and then we're going to hand over to a surprise guest sport in the past time and then we're going to hand over to a surprise guest like in a relay who is going to pick up

from Claire. Phone a friend moment. I mean I think it was as I said in the book club I think that the final analysis or the final agreement was that we thought it was a wonderful book rather than a masterpiece. I think the other conclusion was that we found it was a wonderful book rather than a masterpiece. I think the other conclusion was that

we found it a book about a love affair, but we didn't necessarily find it erotic, and that the sex and the love in the book felt very real, very present. It's written in quite a detailed way, but it didn't feel fetishistic to me or wildly unusual, and I wonder whether that's a sort of just a change of sexual mores or whether in the 60s it would have been a much more um I'm

certain it would have been a much more if we think that Lady Chatterley's Lover was actually banned um that in the 60s would perhaps been a much more risking book than it appears now but But for me, and for many of the other people in the book club, it just felt like it was, as John says, a love affair, people at a certain age at a certain time in their life. And for me, it was romantic and sweet rather than sort of titillating and pornographic. I would like to say thank you to Claire. And now Claire, who has to leave early

is being seamlessly replaced by surprise surprise everybody. We're joined by our former guest once again lovely Rowan Pelling. Thank you for coming back. Thank you. Thank you for asking me. I'm very very delighted to be allowed to talk about filth once again.

This is almost too, you arrived slightly late, this is almost too you arrived slightly late this is almost too perfect so that claire has thrown down the gauntlet and run out of the rooms saying saying well it wasn't that erotic what would you like to say well this is actually the book that i most recommend as a great example of erotic literature this is my number one recommendation has been for years, haven't changed my position on it. I'm really confused by the idea that things can't be tender and romantic

and about really understandable, visceral, real sex at the same time. It's the most... Trigger you. I have to say, I'm with you on that. I think the sex is... If I found the book painful to read, I think the sexist... If I found the book painful to read, it's only because I felt immense nostalgia

for that kind of erotic, complete erotic reverie that... I don't know, without going into too much... I'm laughing. I can't quite see that that's going to happen again. I'm laughing because Rowan doesn't know what I said earlier. I'm sorry to tell you I've got to be consistent for listeners to say that I said earlier that I felt bad about confessing this that the book didn't do much for me. No I've heard that from other people I did a

panel once with Neil Pearson the actor who's a great aficionado of erotic literature and he said no it didn't move him but I don't require my erotic literature to be particularly fetishistic or extreme. I do require it to take me somewhere in the imagination. And what I think makes this so special is the framing device, is the fact that it's narrated, is the fact that we know to a large degree this is the narrator's fantasy,

that he is watching two people and imagining the sex. And that, to me, is really, on a quite simplistic level, pervy. It's kind of beautifully, erotically, sometimes sadistically, because he's torturing himself. And self-torture is the truest part, I think, of eroticism, that we put ourselves in situations where we're frustrated and thwarted. And this book does this to the reader it does this to the narrator and we know that the thing we're reveling in this seemingly uh you know this incredibly beautiful central relationship which

is for both these people obviously the moment at which they really understand what it is to feel deep sort of life-changing passion, something that consumes you where you don't think about anything else. And yet, it's a narrative about fiction, isn't it? It's really about the stories we tell. The narrator is the writer. And there's something that he says in the Paris Review interview that I liked. He said that fiction is a very crude word.

The idea that stories are invented, that purely come out of the imagination. He said, you know, things like dialogue. Dialogue is really difficult to invent. You kind of have to... So that fiction is always a sort of uneasy negotiation between your imagination and the things that are actually happening

to the characters in the real world. What I think is erotic about this book is manipulative. And I think that's true again about eroticism, that when you feel it in your life at its most extreme, very often you're being manipulated by somebody, maybe just by circumstances. Do you mean, when you say manipulative, do you mean as well, I mean, we talked earlier on

about the extent to which he manipulates the reader because he's saying, well, this happened, but it didn't happen. It could have happened. It's up to you, the reader, to decide how much of what I'm telling you is true, right? Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. And I think it's sort of perverse of both the reader and the narrator. We all willingly enter into this strange journey where you're going, this is incredibly titillating. We shouldn't know these details about this couple. It seems to me

more intimate than almost any book I can think of. And the way they progress through things, just in the way people do in the most extraordinary erotic relationships. And it would have been more taboo then. And I think you feel it with the force of the past, you know, the blowjob, the anal sex, all these things that simply are not in literature of that period, let's face it. But it's tender at the same time. And yet you know that this is someone saying, this is what I feel these two people are doing. this is what I feel these two people are doing.

I find that so strangely perverse and you're being placed in a position where you don't really know anything, but you're being, the storyteller is there bringing you along about someone else's love life. You shouldn't be in the bedroom with them. I find that's what's so... Maybe that's the thing that makes it, because it's so, we find that maybe that's so maybe that's the thing about that that makes it because it's so you know we've already said it's so it's beautifully exquisitely brilliantly written

but it's it's difficult it's difficult to empathize with characters that you feel are sort of being manipulated for for somebody else's tittleage mean, there's a lovely thing he says here, which I think the thing I really like, the thing I didn't get 20 years ago or 25 years ago, was just how sad the central relationship is. The central relationship is almost immediately it starts. It's beginning to end, which is a kind of really... Yes.

So he says duration is everything one knows that instinctively it hangs over the two of them like an unpronounced sentence it lies in their bed all of anne-marie's joy proceeds from the hope that they are only beginning that before them is marriage and farewell to autumn while like the negative from which her dreams are printed he perceives the opposite for dean every hour is piercing because it is closer to the end and that without giving too many spoilers away kind of that in that paragraph is the whole of the that's when the book is good and psychologically true and strong, I think it's that... It's almost... It's very good.

I agree, Rowan, I think it's very good in terms of the abandonment of sexual passion, but it's also very good on the deep sadness of what the fuck is love anyway. There's something, I think, in the introduction that Sarah Hall says that captures that, which is... Yeah, I don't think I can read that without giving... I mean, it's weird.

The book is quite perverse, because he is sort of fantasising, you know, that Philip Dean is a kind of a... You know, he's incredibly masculine, he's incredibly well-hung, he's incredibly... He comes like a bull. You know, it's a sort of weird kind of, it is a weird sort of cuckolding fantasy in a way.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's what makes it feel so true. It's funny that it's most fantastical. It feels emotionally most true. And I think it is a very sad story. I mean, it's right from the beginning. I set myself an exercise, actually, with erotic text when I was looking at beginnings and endings. And all the really great ones were fantastic all the way through.

They were quite concise. And the central point was there. And I think you're right, John, that it's about time running out. I mean, it starts September. It seems these luminous days will never end. And what's that telling you? They're going to end really quickly. We all perish. Gather ye rosebuds while you may

the whole thing is so limited and it's such a fragile story he's a traveller this thing about Salter he's a traveller it's rootless these characters are rootless she goes back to see her parents

it's brilliant the anger that he feels when he feels that he doesn't want her to have any life outside of him. The Salter's description of, I mean, his description in an interview, but I think the phrase is around in the book as well, of France as a secular holy land.

The idea of constantly travelling through this landscape. Cathedral towns and dust. There's a quote where he said the book is about sex and architecture and the relationship between those two things. Isn't it also about Americans' love

of the grand tour of this lost continent? She is sexier simply because she is French. If he could understand what she's saying, if she was American saying exactly the same thing, he would not love her. Yeah, the breath thing. Yeah.

I mean, I'm interested. But that cruelty is so intrinsic to Salter's writing. I just think I should say a little bit about Salter. James Salter, born James Arnold Horowitz, born 1925, died 2015. Yeah, really recently. So he was born in the Bronx. He was briefly at school with Jack Kerouac. Did you know that?

I didn't know that. What a class that must have been. Salter graduated. He went to West Point in 1942, trained to become a fighter pilot, fought in Korea, and left in 1957 after 12 years in the US Air Force to pursue his writing after the publication of his first novel The Hunters, subsequently turned into a film starring Robert Mitchum

about a fighter pilot, because it's about fighter pilot films, about a fighter pilot. In the 1960s he writes screenplays alongside the novel, he's quite active in Hollywood and he writes six novels all together, The Hunters He writes screenplays alongside the novel. He's quite active in Hollywood.

And he writes six novels altogether. The Hunters in 1957, The Arm of Flesh in 1961, which is revised and republished many years later as Quesada. A Sport in the Pastime is 65? 67. 67. Then Light Years in 1975, Solo Faces in 1979, then there's a 34-year gap

before the next novel, which is called All That Is, and that's published in 2013, when he was 88, and gets superb reviews. Amazing, if I remember rightly. And he also wrote two volumes of short stories, one of which I've read dusk,

which is magnificent, I must say. It's a superb collection. So although I've expressed... American Express, one of which I've read Dusk which is magnificent I must say so although I've expressed American Express I've expressed slight reservations about A Sport and a Past Time I've expressed no reservations about the short stories, they're wonderful

Rowan's put her head in her hat A Sport and a Past Time I think it's so important that the listeners gather this is a masterpiece. Do not listen to what anyone else says. It is absolutely a masterpiece. It is perfect. There is not one word I take out of it.

I'm coming down on Rowan's side more than I think I am on Andy's. All I would say is that... Because my buddy has left the room. I'm now isolated. All I'm saying is I think that there is something... I can see why people have problems with Salter. Because I think he's maybe too... In a funny kind of way, this book is almost too clever for its own good. He's contrived and he's cruel.

When people don't like Salter, they don't like him because he's cruel. And Light Years, which I think is equally a masterpiece, again, there's incredible cruelty there, as well as a tenderness to the central female character, a wife who has affairs and then, you know, ages. And, of course, it's very hard for people now to read a man who is talking about a woman being so old and lost and her beauty fading

when you work out she's sort of early 30s um and there's a bit of that and there's a past time there's an issue with yeah the objectification of Anne-Marie in the book is is you know there is for some readers that is going to be an issue what is the history of eroticism if not the history of objectifying both men and women look at greek art objectifies boys I mean you know it's an uncomfortable part but that's part of it looking at the body in that way, looking at beauty in its fleeting, you know, appeal, the way it's so fresh, so vibrant,

you'd do anything to possess it, but it is going to disappoint you. Yes, I agree with that, Rowan. I would slightly say, though, that as a reader of this book in 50 years after it was written, that the objectification of the female character did cause me problems. I can see that in the era in which it was written it has that very sort of male expressionist,

Henry Miller-like, forceful, this is the truth about stuff, right? Which you also find in... I read The Ginger Man a couple of months ago which I also found a very tough read because Don Levy, it's very funny but you know what, it's also colossally egotistical

Can't wait till we have the Lawrence Can't wait for the Lawrence podcast and so I feel slightly I feel totally torn on this because I don't want to say this in such a way which would discourage anyone from reading the book. It's a wonderful book. There's fascinating things in it.

But a modern reader coming to it unprepared will be slightly taken aback, I think, at the way in which the female character could be said to be used. Yeah, and funnily enough, we probably wouldn't feel uncomfortable at all if those genders were reversed and it was a slick, sophisticated woman and a slightly hick bloke. Yeah, but I guess that's kind of what history does.

The thing about Salter is he is the classic, going back to this thing we were talking about earlier, that writer's writer, the classic. It seemed to me to be the epitome of a certain kind of American fine prose do you know what I mean? it's almost generic

in fact but Salter's career also suggests he wrote the novels that he wanted to. He also wrote poetry. He also wrote essays.

He also wrote about food. The classic American man of letters, in a way that we could point to other people we've talked about on the podcast yeah um but i love the fact that he this this is a mark of all the great writers really he clearly wrote when he had not when he had something to say and when he didn't have something to say he didn't yeah i mean i i i love this that you know they're always that this is a i have to say that of all the books we've done on Batnest, I underlined more of this book than any other, just in terms of, you know...

That doesn't mean I think it's the best book we've done, because I don't, but I do think it is. I do think it's remarkable. This is a great... This is a key sentence in the novel. I'm not telling the truth about Dean. I'm inventing him. I'm creating him out of my own inadequacies. You must always remember that.

And that is, you almost want to have that at the front of the novel. I am creating out of my own inadequacies. And don't you understand, that excuses him. Everything excuses him, the objectification. It does. He's saying, I'm an inadequate man. I wasn't even allowed to get anywhere near this girl's saying, I'm an adequate man. I wasn't even allowed to get anywhere near this girl.

Of course I'm a sexist pig. I think the reason I like Sorter is because he's so honest. He's so brutal. I forgive him everything. And by the way, his writing, yes, is very contrived. It's very stylish. It is epitome of that kind of really glossy, erudite, unabashedly elitist American writing writing of a certain male now mostly tying off but he does it better to me than for me he's the best line by line the best i i have i i

don't have my home copy with me just as well because as john says i have more lines underscore but also in light years and also in the hunters and also in his memoir Burning the Days and he says so many things better than anyone else will ever say them so you know I think he has to be forgiven all minor quibbles because he's just ravishingly truthful I don't think we can do better than that

follow that we can't I have to say he wrote he wrote some damn good books and some great stories I really love this episode

do you know what I'm saying that I'm showing letting the wires show now I really love this episode because it's been totally slapdash Matt just spilled

a load of water on the table right we've managed to do it by the seat of our pants right but you know what I feel

I feel the discussion of the book has actually totally enriched my understanding of the book. And now, if you'd asked me an hour ago, I would have said, yeah, it was okay. Now I'm really, if people are listening to this, if you're still listening, if you're still here with us, you must read this book.

I think the fact that we've had four different points of view round the table, we all feel quite strongly about it. That's great. That's exactly what I feel too. I feel it's really good when you get to test the stuff. And I didn't know really... I did know up to a point what I thought about it, but I feel more strongly having listened. But I love... I mean mean this is a good bit

of Salter to go out on which is we write because all this is going to vanish, the only thing left will be the prose, the poems, the books, possibly even the journals what is written down we're very fortunate to have invented the book

without it the past would completely vanish and we would be left with nothing. We would be naked on the earth. And that is, I have to say, that's pretty, we can nail that on the backlisted clubhouse wall. Seems real shame to have to say that that's where we end,

but that's where we're going to end. Thanks to Claire Conville and also to Rowan Pelling, a composite guest, a tag team, the like of which Backlisted had never seen before. Thanks to producer Matt Hall, as ever. Thanks to our sponsors, Unbound. You can get to us on Twitter at BacklistedPod, on Facebook at Backlisted, and on the Unbound site at unbound.com forward slash backlisted.

Thank you for listening. We'll be back in a fortnight with another show. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. You can choose to listen to Backlisted with or without adverts. If you prefer to listen to it without adverts, you can join us on our Patreon

at patreon.com forward slash backlisted where you also get bonus content of two episodes of Locklisted, the podcast where we talk about the books and films and music that we've been listening to over the last couple of weeks.