James Salter

James Salter was the author of six novels and two short-story collections. Born in 1925, Salter grew up in New York City, graduated from West Point, and served in the U.S. Army Air Force for twelve years; his first novel, The Hunters (1956), drew on his experience as a pilot in the Korean War. Soon after its publication, Salter resigned from the Air Force in order to devote himself wholly to his writing. His other novels include A Sport and a Pastime (1967), a classic of erotic realism, Light Years (1975), and Solo Faces (1979). His subject is human desire in its many forms: longing, jealousy, ambition, the need to triumph, to achieve perfection, to be loved, to belong. All That Is, his final novel, was published in April 2013. It was welcomed by the New York Times as “a work that manages to be both recognizable (no one but Salter could have written it) and yet strikingly original, vigorous proof that this literary lion is still very much on the prowl.”