A writer's writer

All That Is - James Salter (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013)

I've heard Salter described as a "writer's writer" and judging from the author names on the blurbs (John Banville, Tim O'Brien, Julian Barnes, Edmund White, John Irving) it seems it must be so. What I have read of these authors makes me lump them together as beautiful constructors of prose, but too masculine in some ways for my sensibilities (to grossly oversimplify, since A Prayer for Owen Meany made me bawl more than I think any book ever has). And it's almost too bad I went into the novel with that preconception, since the book pretty much fit right into it.

Salter is a gorgeous writer. I was struck again and again by the beauty of the sentences. It kept me reading. And I was interested in the characters too, I swear. But I felt like I was watching them from some remove. I never particularly cared, I just wanted to see how prettily they could be written about. And that's fine, but it's different from what I normally care to read. Maybe it's what has to happen when your characters are roughly Mad Men-era.

Some of the lovely lines I noted:

When Bowman first falls in love, almost blindly: "When you love you see a future according to your dreams."

About another character's girlfriend's ex: "He was destined to be a father who would never disappear because of the way he did."

The next woman Bowman loves: "The truth is, with some women you are never sure. They had traveled for ten days and he felt he knew her [...] but you could not know someone else all of the time, their thoughts, about which is was useless to ask."

Bowman's mother, reflecting on the afterlife: "I think that whatever you believe will happen is what happens." A reflection that Bowman comes back to at least once in the remainder of the novel.

Anyway, a step outside of my comfort zone, and one I'm glad I took.