All that is james salter review

James Salter’s characters spend a lot of time in bed.

All that is james salter review

Mostly they’re having transcendent sex. Occasionally they talk. Here’s a woman sitting up in bed, talking to her lover:

– You know something?

– What?

– I’ve had good sex since I was fifteen, she said.

The calm, considered happiness of these short lines kept echoing in my head during a long Salter binge I recently undertook to ease my disappointment in his new novel, All That Is, published this week by Knopf.

At one dizzy moment – I’d been reading good sex since February – I decided the conversation must have appeared in All That Is. The retrospective tone seemed a natural fit for a book chronicling four decades in the life and loves of a navy man and literary editor named Philip Bowman.

All that is james salter review new york times

I went back and scoured the bedroom scenes of Philip’s every affair. Nightgowns are lifted. Pillows are strategically placed. Women appear to our hero as England, as camera tripods, as dying dogs. At one p