More Quotes

I recently read “A Sport and a Pastime” by James Salter, a book that had been on my list for at least a year.  A friend pointed me (after the fact) to a profile of him in the  New Yorker from 2013 that stated his frustration with not quite breaking into the canon of top-tier writers.  One of the sentences was something to the effect of “he is tired of being seen as a writer of great sentences, of books with dogeared pages.”  It made me wince, because while I couldn’t bring myself to really love the book – it hasn’t aged well as the shocking intimacy of a 1960s affair seems almost banal today – I certainly underlined a few sentences and dogeared a few pages:

“If I had been an underclassman he would have become my hero, the rebel who, if I had only had the courage, I might have also become. Instead I did everything properly. I had good marks. I took care of my books. My clothes were right. Now, looking at him, I am convinced of all I missed. I am envious. Somehow his life seems more truthful than mine, stronger, even able to draw mine to it like the pull of a dark star.”

“She has her moments. Still, it’s dangerous to believe in what she seems to be. One often has the impression there is another, desperate woman underneath, but this is the extent of her power, this intimation of sexual wealth. Billy always talks about how beautiful she is. It’s almost as if he’s protesting: but she is beautiful. And she is. Their life is arranged to exhibit this beauty. They treat it like the possession of a fine house.”

All of his early descriptions of France and Autun are superb, I can’t excerpt just one out of context.  I was also surprised to find the title comes from an unattributed translation of the Koran.  Looking it up on my own (Salter assigns the quote from 57:19, but I find it is 57:20 from the online Koran I found) the verse is essentially chastising the reader that this life is a delusion, that amusement and diversion (a sport and a pastime) are frivolous and that in the long term we should be thinking about obtaining forgiveness from Allah as we enter the eternal.  The word “delusion” in the translation I found seemed appropriate given the unreliable narrator, and knowing more about the quote makes me like the novel more.  I recommend the book for the sentences and dogeared pages, but as a modern classic I fear it fails to stand up.