A Sport and a Pastime

"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know," is how Reynolds Price describes this classic novel from American writer James Salter. Salter chronicles a love affair between a young shopgirl and an American college dropout against the backdrop of provincial France. The narrator's cool distillation of events—real or imagined—makes the book both lyrical and tightly, dangerously pitched.

Praise

"Salter inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, and John Cheever."—Ned Rorem, The Washington Post Book World

"A feverishly compressed, exquisitely controlled story."—Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

"A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliff-hanger, an opaline vision of Americans in France . . . A Sport and a Pastime succeeds as art must. It tells us about ourselves."—The New York Times Book Review

"Sentence for sentence, Salter is a master."—Richard Ford

"Salter particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure."—Susan Sontag

About the Author(s)

James Salter

James Salter was born in New Jersey in 1926 and is the author of The Hunters, The Arm of Flesh, Solo Faces, Light Years, Dusk and Other Stories (winner of the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award), and a memoir, Burning the Days. He lives in Aspen, Colorado, and Long Island, New York.

Guides

Reading Group Guide

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