Of James Salter, Richard Ford, writing in the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Light Years, said, “It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anybody writing today.”
It is said that when the late Joseph Fox, famed literary editor at Random House, was asked what books he edited would be called “great” long after we were all gone, he claimed there were two: one was In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, and the other was Light Years, by James Salter.
I first read Light Years 15 years ago after completing my first reading of A Sport and a Pastime. I remember the reading of the relatively short book—roughly 300 pages in the currently released addition—taking me a long time. The problem was the quality of the sentences; they were too good. I found myself rereading each paragraph, each page, over and over again simply to savor the perfectly chosen words. A few weeks later, I sat down and read the book cover-to-cover a second time. It was then that I allowed my self to meet and fall in love with Nedra, as did everyone else within her small circle.
As of this writing, I’ve read the book countless times, and own two copies. In one I’ve taken the liberty to highlight favorite passages and scribble opinions, thoughts and feelings his words have inspired—it’s my favorite copy, one I have to be careful to set aside when I’m writing in fear it might influence my own work to too great a degree.
“A page should seem effortless … as if the page wrote itself,” Salter has said when confronted with the claims that he must have spent hours on each perfectly crafted sentence. He says he rewrites, but that for the most part, the words we read are the original words flowing from his mind. Yet, if there is a flaw with Light Years, it is that reading Salter’s prose is anything but effortless. The flow of the narrative is often stopped cold when the reader is confronted with descriptions so dazzling that you simply have to stop and savor before continuing on.
Salter is a master of the short story and Light Years is a beautifully woven tapestry of scenes and vignettes. No one I know of is able to develop such measured tone in such well-rounded characters set within a framework of time and place, and do so in only a paragraph or two. Light Years is the story of Viri and Nedra, a seemingly perfect couple, though not faithful to each other, who are living only slightly above their means while hoping to live life to the fullest. Viri, an architect, would be satisfied if their seemingly idyllic life together with their two daughters, a dog, and a pony in a farm-like setting on the Hudson river went on as always.
Viri is finally summed up with the lines, “One of the last great realizations is that life will not be what you dreamed,” and, “ . . . he had a sickening vision of what the years might bring: the too-familiar restaurant, a small apartment, empty evenings.”
Yet Nedra has an understanding of life’s brevity and a need to discover everything is has to offer, though she’s unsure as to what that means. For all the world, theirs seems a perfect life, yet the conflict lies not on the placid surface, but in the churning turmoil beneath. A part of us wants Viri and Nedra to remain together. But we also understand the terrifying urgency Nedra feels regarding her dissatisfaction with her own existence. At one point, of divorce, she says, “The really depressing thing is the absolute optimism of it all.”
A major theme can be summed up as follows:
“And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it deceiving. 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 the other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.”
“We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers turn to the sun.”
More than anything, Light Years is a story of time and existence within it. In many ways, one could say the story is sad. Perhaps it is. But it is sad in a stimulating, enlivening manner.
Read everything you can by James Salter. Savor it as you would fine wine. It won’t disappoint you.
