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8f9485d
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His mother is dead. She was a suicide. Her marriage was terrifying to her. In the center of it she found herself completely alone. During the last year she sent long telegrams to her sister, sometimes quoting poetry, Swinburne, Blake. One day she burned her diaries, a spring day, and walked into the Connecticut River to drown, just like Virginia Woolf or Madame Magritte. She was buried in Boston, her home. I could see the ceremony. Dean is ..
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James Salter |
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9522f3f
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DEAD FLIES ON THE SILLS OF sunny windows, weeds along the pathway, the kitchen empty. The house was melancholy, deceiving; it was like a cathedral where, amid the serenity, something is false, the saints are made of florist's wax, the organ has been gutted.
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James Salter |
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2eb7751
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He had his life--it was not worth much--not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage, he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one--we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who w..
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James Salter |
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48b24eb
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If you can think of life, for a moment, as a large house with a nursery, living and dining rooms, bedrooms, study, and so forth, all unfamiliar and bright, the chapters which follow are, in a way, like looking through the windows of this house. Certain occupants will be glimpsed only briefly. Visitors come and go. At some windows you may wish to stay longer, but alas. As with any house, all within cannot be seen.
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James Salter |
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789caa9
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Either that," he said, "or it comes true later. I'll tell you another story. There was a father who gave his son a shotgun. It was very small. It was a luparetta. So the son went to school, and he met another boy with a wrist watch. It was a beautiful wrist watch, he fell in love with it. He wanted it, so he traded; he gave his luparetta to the boy and he got the watch." "Is this a true story?" "Who knows? When the son came home that aftern..
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James Salter |
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263f58d
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It was easy to find things she would like. Our taste was the same, it had been from the first. It would be impossible to live with someone otherwise. I've always thought it was the most important single thing, though people may not realize it. Perhaps it's transmitted to them in the way someone dresses or, for that matter, undresses, but taste is a thing no one is born with, it's learned, and at a certain point it can't be altered. We somet..
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James Salter |
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feed812
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Eve was tall. Her face had cheekbones. Her shoulders slumped when she walked. The shelves in her living room were bent beneath the books. She worked for a publisher; oh, you've heard of him, she said. Her life was one in which everything was left undone--letters unanswered, bills on the floor, the butter sitting out all night. Perhaps that was why her husband had left her; he was even more hopeless than she. At least she was gay. She steppe..
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James Salter |
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0827919
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She formed her life day by day, taking as its materials the emptiness and panic as well as the rushes, like fever, of contentment. I am beyond fear of solitude, she thought, I am past it. The idea thrilled her. I am beyond it and I will not sink. This submission, this triumph made her stronger. It was as if finally, after having passed through inferior stages, her life had found a form worthy of it.
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self-reliance
solitude
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James Salter |
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76be8d0
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Great lovers lie in hell, the poet says. Even now, long afterwards, I cannot destroy the images. They remain within me like the yearnings of an addict. I need only hear certain words, see certain gestures, and my thoughts begin to tumble. I despise myself for thinking of her. Even if she were dead, I would feel the same. Her existence blackens my life.
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James Salter |
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05136fb
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Dresscodes are for styleless people.
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James Salter |
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fef1879
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That night she heard the branches tapping against the house and the window frames rattle. She sat alone and thought of the geese, she could hear them out there. It had gotten cold. The wind was blowing their feathers. They lived a long time, ten or fifteen years, they said. The one they had seen on the lawn might still be alive, settled back into the fields with the others, in from the ocean where they went to be safe, the survivors of bloo..
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James Salter |
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a124f2f
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His devotion is complete; he is beginning to sense the confusion that arises from the first fears of what life would be like without her. He knows there can be such a thing, but like the answer to a difficult problem, he cannot imagine it.
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James Salter |
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3a5c998
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There are men who seem to have seized the trunk of life, and he was one of them. It might not be for everyone, the great, scarring thing you could not get your arms around, but it was there for him.
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James Salter |
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9f2a1e1
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There are men who seem destined to always go first, to lead the way. They are confident in life, they are the first to go beyond it. Whatever there is to know, they learn before others. Their very existence gives strength and drives one onward. Love and jealousy were mingled there in the darkness, love and despair.
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James Salter |
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509230b
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Leven is het weer. Leven is maaltijden. Lunch op een blauw-geruit kleed waar zout op is gemorst. De geur van tabak. Brie, gele appels, messen met houten handvaten.
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hapiness
life
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James Salter |
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c45dfc7
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There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.
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James Salter |
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425d83c
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She begins to strip like a roommate and climb into bed. They have fallen asleep. Dean wakes first, in the early afternoon. He unfastens her stockings and slowly rolls them off. Her skirt is next and then her underpants. She opens her eyes. The garter belt he leaves on, to confirm her nakedness. He rests his head there. Her hand touches his chest and begins to fall in excruciating slow designs. He lies still as a dog beneath it, still as an ..
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James Salter |
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b2bd2f2
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They ate dinner in silence. Her husband did not look at her. her face annoyed him, he did not know why. She could be good-looking but there were times when she was not. Her face was like a series of photographs, some of which ought to have been thrown away. Tonight it was like that.
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James Salter |
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1273688
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There was a time, usually late in August, when summer struck the trees with dazzling power and they were rich with leaves but then became, suddenly one day, strangely still, as if in expectation and at that moment aware. They knew. Everything knew, the beetles, the frogs, the crows solemnly walking across the lawn. The sun was at its zenith and embraced the world, but it was ending, all that one loved was at risk.
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James Salter |
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fa76c00
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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.
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James Salter |
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45b4334
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She is married. I suppose there are children. They walk together on Sundays, the sunlight falling upon them. They visit friends, talk, go home in the evening, deep in the life we all agree is so greatly to be desired.
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James Salter |
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7261907
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THEY WERE DIVORCED IN THE fall. I wish it could have been otherwise. The clarity of those autumn days affected them both. For Nedra, it was as if her eyes had been finally opened; she saw everything, she was filled with a great, unhurried strength. It was still warm enough to sit outdoors. Viri walked, the old dog wandering behind him. The fading grass, the trees, the very light made him dizzy, as if he were an invalid or starving. He caugh..
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James Salter |
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980b1ff
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Every object, even those which had been hers, which he never touched, seemed to share his loss. He was suddenly parted from his life. That presence, loving or not, which fills the emptiness of rooms, mildens them, makes them light--that presence was gone. The simple greed that makes one cling to a woman left him suddenly desperate, stunned. A fatal space had opened, like that between a liner and the dock which is suddenly too wide to leap; ..
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James Salter |
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acc3012
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Strauss's, for instance, which begins in the heavens. The artist doesn't ascend to glory, he appears in it, he already has it and the world is prepared to recognize him. Meteoric, like a comet--those are the phrases we apply, and it's true, it is a kind of burning. It makes them highly visible, and at the same time it consumes them, and it's only afterwards, when the brilliance is gone, when their bones are lying alongside those of lesser m..
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James Salter |
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cee326d
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It's just that it's hard to believe in greatness...
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James Salter |
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ff4cf4d
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Do you know what Krisnamurti says? Consciously or unconsciously we are all completely selfish, and as long as we get what we want, we believe everything is all right. 'Getting what we want.... but is that happiness ?' 'I don't know. I know that not getting what you want is certainly unhappiness
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James Salter |
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05ad06c
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The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four-the years turn dry as leaves.
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James Salter |
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98b33fe
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Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit.
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James Salter |
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671c863
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When he undressed at night he was like a diplomat or a judge. A white body, gentle and powerless, emerged from his clothes, his position in the world lay tumbled on the floor, fallen from his ankles...
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James Salter |
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5875fa4
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He walks toward the river, placing his feet carefully. His suit is too warm and tight. He reaches the water's edge. There is the dock, unused now, with its flaking paint and rotten boards, its underpilings drenched in green. Here at the great, dark river, here on the bank. It happens in an instant. It is all one long day, one endless afternoon, friends leave, we stand on the shore. Yes, he thought, I am ready, I have always been ready, I am..
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James Salter |
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71eb6e5
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Anne-Marie Costallat, born October 8, 1944. I was beginning high school and masturbating twice a day, curling over it like a dead leaf, when she was born, in a bed of violets, as she says--all French mothers tell their children that.
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James Salter |
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d898e0e
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It's ahead of us. All I can tell you is, not even courage will help." "Are you reading Alma Mahler again?" "No." Her voice was even and knowing. The underground river. The ceiling lowers, grows wet, the water rushes into darkness. The air becomes damp and icy, the passage narrows. Light is lost here, sound; the current begins to flow beneath great, impassable slabs."
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James Salter |
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264f878
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I have not forgotten those days, I have only forgotten how simply they seemed to occur ...
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James Salter |
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3e4b8cb
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incandescent afternoons in Spain, the shutters closed, a blade of sun burning into the darkness.
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James Salter |
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681b330
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The heart is in darkness, unknowing, like those animals in mines that have never seen the day. It has no loyalties, no hopes; it has its task.
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James Salter |
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142853a
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I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.
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James Salter |
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30a738e
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The only light was a standing lamp by his chair, near his elbow was a drink. He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.
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James Salter |
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89d3849
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A writer cannot really grasp what he has written. It is not like a building or a sculpture; it cannot be seen whole. It is only a kind of smoke seized and printed on a page.
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writing-philosophy
writing-process
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James Salter |
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c5f7744
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He lived in it helplessly as we live in our bodies when we are older.
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James Salter |
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023d4ec
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Dean is still asleep. His clothes are strewn about. The shutters are closed. He never dreams. He's like a dead musician, like a spent runner. He hasn't the strength to dream, or rather, his dreams take place while he is awake and they are marvelous for at least one quality: he has the power to prolong them.
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James Salter |
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4ad30ee
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Bowman, too, had been born in a great city, in the French Hospital in Manhattan, in the burning heat of August and very early in the morning when all geniuses are born, as Pearson once told him. There had been an unbreathing stillness, and near dawn faint, distant thunder. It grew slowly louder, then gusts of cooler air before a tremendous storm broke with lightning and sheets of rain, and when it was over,
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James Salter |
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4436853
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Gertrude Stein, when asked why she wrote, replied "For praise." Lorca said he wrote to be loved. Faulkner said a writer wrote for glory. I may at times have written for those reasons, it's hard to know. Overall I write because I see the world in a certain way that no dialogue or series of them can begin to describe, that no book can fully render, though the greatest books thrill in their attempt. A great book may be an accident, but a goo..
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James Salter |
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0d6d4f7
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England? The worst of all. You know, I do some business there, I have friends in England. Their flats are broken into constantly. The police come, they look around, they dust for fingerprints. Well, we know who it is, they say. Wonderful, who? The same ones who did it last time, they say.
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James Salter |
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4ac63ab
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Greatness is something which can be regarded in a number of ways," he said. "It is, of course, the apotheosis, man raised to his highest powers, but it also can be, in a way, like insanity, a certain kind of imbalance, a flaw, in most cases a beneficial flaw, an anomaly, an accident." "Well, many great men are eccentric," Viri said, "even narrow." "Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense." --
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James Salter |