A Sport and a Pastime »

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, and a memoir, Burning the Days. He lives in Aspen, Colorado, and Long Island, New York.

A beautiful, lyrical tale of an ill-fated love affair set against the backdrop of a myriad of small French towns, this stunning novel is observed through the eyes and imagination of a narrator who, in the story of Dean and Anne-Marie s relationship, captures some essential aspect of what it means to be truly alive.

When we first meet Dean, a handsome Yale dropout possessed of great charm and a certain confident aloofness, he seems a man for whom life is easy and effortless. During what is intended to be a brief holiday in France, Dean pursues a passionate affair with Anne-Marie, an alluring, beautiful young shopgirl who is wise beyond her years and experience. Driving across the countryside in his elegant, somewhat dilapidated Delage, they stop at picturesque hotels and engage in romantic trysts that build in intimacy and ardor. Issues of class prove a stumbling block for Dean, however, and as Anne-Marie begins to shed her doubts about him, he vacillates between envisioning a comfortable life with Anne-Marie and wanting to escape from her suffocating proximity. The narrator keenly and acutely observes and imagines the lovers public sojourns and private embraces, interpreting both his own voyeurism and their affair as criminal acts. In A Sport and a Pastime, Salter has created a perfect gem of a book, at once an erotic masterpiece and a haunting, transcendent examination of humanity and sexual desire.

The Washington Post Book World - Ned Rorem

Salter inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, and John Cheever.