James Salter
| James Salter | |
|---|---|
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 |
A Sport and a Pastime
James Arnold Horowitz (June 10, 1925 – June 19, 2015), better known as James Salter, his pen name and later-adopted legal name, was an American novelist and short-story writer. Originally a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, he resigned from the military in 1957 following the successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters.
After a brief career in film writing and film directing, in 1979 Salter published the novel Solo Faces. He won numerous literary awards for his works, including belated recognition of works originally criticized at the time of their publication. His friend and fellow author, the Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford, went so far as to say, "It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anybody writing today" in his Introduction to Light Years for Penguin Modern Classics. Michael Dirda of the Washington Post is reported to have said that with a single sentence, he could break one's heart. In an introduction to the final interview he gave before his death, Guernica described Salter as having "a good claim to being the greatest living American novelist."
On June 10, 1925 Salter was born and named James Arnold Horowitz, the son of Mildred Scheff and George Horowitz, a real estate broker and businessman. He attended P.S.6, the Horace Mann School, and among his classmates were Julian Beck, while Jack Kerouac attended during the 1939-40 academic year.
Variously, he is said to have favored either Stanford University or MIT as his choice of college, but in fact entered West Point on July 15, 1942, at the urging of his alumnus father who had gone back into the Corps of Engineers in July 1941 in anticipation of the war. As did his father, Horowitz attended West Point during a world war, when class size was greatly increased and the curriculum drastically shortened (his father was graduated in November 1918, after only 16 months in the academy, and with others of his Class of 1919 was called back after a month of duty to complete a post-graduate officer's course). Graduated in 1945 after just three years, Horowitz ranked 49th in general merit in his class of 852.
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