Burning the Days

Recollection

by James Salter

A memoir by the the New York novelist (author of SOLO FACES and CASSADA). Salter describes his childhood, his education at West Point and his years as an Air Force flier, his early years as a screenwriter and novelist, and his recollections of the many members of the literary scene (like Robert Phelps and Ben Sonnenberg) who became his friends.

Editions of Burning the Days

ISBN 9780375500152	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Random House Inc	Date 1997	Price $1.00	Used, Very Good
ISBN 9781860465055	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Harvill Pr	Date 1998	Price None Available
ISBN 9780394759487	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Vintage Books	Date 1998	Price $5.86	Used - Like New

Publisher Notes

In this brilliant book of recollection, one of Americas finest writers re-creates people, places, and events spanning some fifty years, bringing to life an entire era through one mans sensibility. Scenes of love and desire, friendship, ambition, life in foreign cities and New York, are unforgettably rendered here in the unique style for which James Salter is widely admired.Burning the Days captures a singular life, beginning with a Manhattan boyhood and then, satisfying his fathers wishes, graduation from West Point, followed by service in the Air Force as a pilot. In some of the most evocative pages ever written about flying, Salter describes the exhilaration and terror of combat as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, scenes that are balanced by haunting pages of love and a young mans passion for women.After resigning from the Air Force, Salter begins a second life, becoming a writer in the New York of the 1960s. Soon films beckon. There are vivid portraits of actors, directors, and producers--Polanski, Robert Redford, and others. Here also, more important, are writers who were influential, some by their character, like Irwin Shaw, others because of their taste and knowledge.Ultimately Burning the Days is an illumination of what it is to be a man, and what it means to become a writer.Only once in a long while--Vladimir Nabokovs Speak, Memory or Isak Dinesens Out of Africa--does a memoir of such extraordinary clarity and power appear. Unconventional in form, Burning the Days is a stunning achievement by the writer The Washington Post Book World said "inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and John Cheever" --a rare and unforgettable book.

Media Reviews

"'Burning the Days' is a book that demands to be argued with, but it is also a book of genuine artistry and, in its fashion, humanity. Even though it leaves too many questions unmentioned or unresolved, it has the virtues its author so admires: experience, ambition, accomplishment."

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