Trouble and strife in the world of American poetry. About a month ago, the New Yorker published a (very) lengthy piece by Dana Goodyear, in which she takes to task the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation and its "businessman-poet" president John Barr. Barr is scolded for succumbing to a blatantly consumerist aesthetic as he aspires to "aspires to reunite poetry with the current of popular entertainment" in the wake of a $200m dollar bequest from wealthy recluse Ruth Lilly. Continue reading...Badge of honour ... Penguin ClassicsLeaving aside for the moment exactly what constitutes a literary classic, it's surely a cause for celebration that James Salter, one of the great American writers of the last 50 years, has joined that select group of authors to see their books appear as Penguin Modern Classics in their own lifetimes. Born in New York in 1925, Salter graduated from West Point, flew fighter jets in Korea, published his first novel in 1957, and has slowly built a body of work as widely praised as it has been little read.
The two books Penguin have wrapped in their silver livery are The Hunters, Salter's debut, and the 1975 novel Light Years, choices which give a good indication of the breadth of his talent. The Hunters is an extraordinary war novel, at once a lucidly realistic study of the daily grind fighter pilots experienced in Korea, and an existential inquiry into personal honour set against the intransigent military evaluation of a man's worth (MiGs, MiGs and more MiGs). Light Years is more ambitious in scope, spanning as it does 20 years in the lives of Nedra and Viri, from the Edenic early years of their exurbian idyll on the Hudson with two beloved daughters and cultured friends, through affairs, divorce, death and disillusionment.
The two books Penguin have wrapped in their silver livery are The Hunters, Salter's debut, and the 1975 novel Light Years, choices which give a good indication of the breadth of his talent. The Hunters is an extraordinary war novel, at once a lucidly realistic study of the daily grind fighter pilots experienced in Korea, and an existential inquiry into personal honour set against the intransigent military evaluation of a man's worth (MiGs, MiGs and more MiGs). Light Years is more ambitious in scope, spanning as it does 20 years in the lives of Nedra and Viri, from the Edenic early years of their exurbian idyll on the Hudson with two beloved daughters and cultured friends, through affairs, divorce, death and disillusionment.
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