James Salter facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
James Salter
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Salter in 2010
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| Born | James Arnold Horowitz June 10, 1925 Passaic, New Jersey |
| Died | June 19, 2015 (aged 90) Sag Harbor, New York |
| Pen name | James Salter |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Notable works | A Sport and a Pastime, All That Is |
| Spouses |
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| Children | 5 |
James Salter (born James Arnold Horowitz, June 10, 1925 – June 19, 2015) was an American novelist and short-story writer. He used "James Salter" as his pen name and later made it his legal name.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Salter was a pilot and officer in the United States Air Force. He left the military in 1957 after his first novel, The Hunters, was published and became successful. He also worked briefly in film, writing and directing movies. In 1979, Salter published the novel Solo Faces. He received many awards for his books, even for some that were not popular when they first came out.
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The Early Life of James Salter
James Arnold Horowitz was born on June 10, 1925. His parents were Mildred Scheff and George Horowitz. His father was a real estate agent and businessman. He had also graduated from West Point in 1918 and served in the Army Corps of Engineers. Salter's father became a colonel and received an award called the Legion of Merit.
Horowitz grew up in Manhattan, New York. He went to P.S.6 and the Horace Mann School. He wanted to study at Stanford University or MIT. However, his father encouraged him to join West Point, which he did on July 15, 1942. His father had rejoined the Corps of Engineers in 1941 because war was expected.
Just like his father, James's time at West Point was shorter than usual. This was because more students were joining during wartime, and the lessons were sped up. He graduated in 1945 after only three years. He was ranked 49th out of 852 students in his class.
Military Career and First Novel
During his time at West Point, James completed flight training. He trained in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Stewart Field, New York. In May 1945, while on a flight, he ran low on fuel. He mistook a railroad trestle for a runway and crash-landed his T-6 Texan training plane into a house in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
After this, he was assigned to train with larger B-25 planes until February 1946. His first assignment was with the 6th Airlift Squadron in the Philippines, Okinawa, and Japan. He became a 1st lieutenant in January 1947.
In September 1947, Horowitz moved to Hickam AFB in Hawaii. Then, in August 1948, he started studying at Georgetown University and earned his master's degree in January 1950. He was then stationed at Langley AFB in Virginia until he volunteered for the Korean War.
He arrived in Korea in February 1952 after training to fly the F-86 Sabre jet. He joined the 335th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, which was famous for hunting MiG planes. He flew over 100 combat missions between February and August 1952. He was credited with shooting down a MiG-15 on July 4, 1952.
After the Korean War, Horowitz was stationed in Germany and France. He was promoted to major and led an aerial demonstration team. He was also in line to become a squadron commander. In his free time, he wrote his first novel, The Hunters. He published it in 1956 using the pen name "James Salter."
The money he earned from selling the film rights to his novel allowed Salter to leave the US Air Force in 1957 and become a full-time writer. He also legally changed his name to Salter. It was hard for him to switch from being a fighter pilot for twelve years to being a writer.
From Military to Movies and Books
The 1958 film adaptation, The Hunters, starred Robert Mitchum. The movie was praised for its strong acting and realistic look at the Korean War. However, the film was quite different from Salter's original book. The novel was about a 31-year-old fighter pilot who was once considered great but found only disappointment in his first combat experience.
His 1961 novel, The Arm of Flesh, was based on his experiences flying in Germany between 1954 and 1957. A new version of this novel was released in 2000 as Cassada. However, Salter later said that he didn't think much of his "Air Force" novels, calling them works of his youth. After several years in the Air Force Reserve, he completely left the military in 1961.
He moved back to New York with his family. Salter and his first wife, Ann, divorced in 1975. They had four children: daughters Allan (who passed away in 1980) and Nina, and twin sons Claude and James. In 1976, he began living with journalist and playwright Kay Eldredge. They had a son, Theo, born in 1985. Salter and Eldredge got married in Paris in 1998. They also wrote a book together called Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days in 2006.
A Career in Writing
Salter started writing for films, first for independent documentaries. He won an award at the Venice Film Festival for a film he made with television writer Lane Slate. He also wrote for Hollywood, even though he didn't always like it. His last movie script, which was ordered and then rejected by actor Robert Redford, became his novel, Solo Faces.
James Salter was a highly respected writer of modern American fiction. He was very critical of his own work. He once said that only his 1967 novel, A Sport and a Pastime, came close to meeting his own high standards.
Salter's writing style shows influences from authors like Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller. However, in interviews, Salter said he was most influenced by André Gide and Thomas Wolfe.
In 1988, Salter published a collection of short stories called Dusk and Other Stories. This collection won the PEN/Faulkner Award. One of its stories, "Twenty Minutes," was used as the basis for the 1996 film Boys. He became a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2000. In 2012, he received the PEN/Malamud Award. The award committee said his works teach readers "how to work with fire, flame, the laser, all the forces of life at the service of creating sentences that spark and make stories burn."
His last novel, All That Is, was published in 2013 and received excellent reviews.
Salter's writings, including his letters, original manuscripts, and heavily edited drafts of his published works, are kept at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.
In the fall of 2014, Salter became the first Kapnick Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia. He passed away on June 19, 2015, in Sag Harbor, New York.
Awards and Honors
- 2014: Awarded the Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature.
- 2013: Windham–Campbell Literature Prize
- 2012: PEN/Malamud Award
- 2010: Rea Award for the Short Story
- 1989: PEN/Faulkner Award
Works by James Salter
Novels
- The Hunters (1957; revised in 1997)
- The Arm of Flesh (1961; republished as Cassada in 2000)
- A Sport and a Pastime (1967)
- Light Years (1975)
- Solo Faces (1979)
- Burning the Days (memoir, 1997)
- Cassada (2012)
- All That Is (2013)
Screenplays (Movies)
- Downhill Racer (1969)
- The Appointment (1969)
- Three (1969; he also directed this film)
- Threshold (1981)
Short Stories and Essays
- Dusk and Other Stories (short stories, 1988; won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1989)
- Last Night (short stories, 2005)
- There and Then: The Travel Writing of James Salter (essays, 2005)
- "My Lord You" and "Palm Court" (2006)
- "Odessa, Mon Amour" (2009) in Narrative Magazine
- Collected Stories (2013)
- "As Evening Falls" (2014) in Narrative Magazine
- Don't Save Anything (2017)
Other Works
- Still Such (poetry, 1988)
- "Passionate Falsehoods". Personal History. The New Yorker August 4, 1997.
- Gods of Tin (a collection of memoirs, 2004; includes parts from The Hunters, Cassada, and Burning the Days)
- Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days (with Kay Eldredge, 2006)
- Memorable Days: The Selected Letters of James Salter and Robert Phelps (2010)
- Introduction to Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet, translated by Siân Reynolds (2012)
Books Published After His Death
- The Art of Fiction (2016), with an Introduction by John Casey. ISBN: 9780813939056 – This book contains three lectures Salter gave at the University of Virginia when he was 89 years old.
- Don't Save Anything (2017). This book was put together by his wife and contains a collection of his non-fiction writings.
See also
In Spanish: James Salter para niños
