June 3, 2023 | Rome, Italy

A Sport and a Pastime

By |2018-03-21T18:27:25+01:00April 1st, 2007|Recent Reviews|

By James Salter

North Point Press, 1967 (2007). 191 pages.

T

his brisk erotic pastoral can wear out its welcome unless you pause to marvel at the sentences, among the best by a contemporary American novelist.

“A geography of favored streets is forming for me while I sleep,” writes the narrator, whose friend Dean (at times Jimmy Dean-esque), falls hard for a Frenchwoman. The action (the fast tourism of towns, sex, and much good food) takes place mostly in rural France of the mid-1960s. Salter delivers an urbanely erotic road-trip for lovers of inspired writing.

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