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| My TBR shelf |
By
Lisabet Sarai
I’m
reading several books at the moment, with many more on the stack (see
above!), but I want to focus on only one title in this post: ASport and a Pastime by James Salter. I’m about three quarters
of the way through this slim novel, which manages the unusual feat of
being both intensely literary and unabashedly erotic.
It’s
a common observation that sex and literature don’t generally play
well together. I’ve encountered many articles (some posts on this
blog as well as on ERWA) which observed that literary novels can
include sex only if nobody enjoys it. Of course that’s hogwash, but
one can note a definite trend toward dysfunctional relationships and
unhappy endings for sexually-active characters in books labeled as
“literature”. We erotica authors often complain about the fact
that literary authors can write with impunity about topics like
teenage sexuality or incest, while any story of ours that touches
these subjects will be promptly banned, or at least relegated to the
dungeon. This double standard is especially irritating to those of us
who experiment with themes as well as stylistic and narrative
techniques that might, in another genre, be considered “literary”.
I
first became aware of A Sport and a Pastime while reading an
interview with another author, about his favorite books. I’d never
heard of either the book or its author, but the article offered high
praise for both its beautiful writing and its sensuality. I was
intrigued enough to go buy a brand-new copy, something of a rarity
for me.
From
the interview, I’d thought the book was relatively new. However, it
turns out that A Sport and a Pastime was published way back in
1967. Furthermore, it is considered by many to be a modern classic.
While searching for it on Amazon, I found Cliff Notes for students
who were assigned the book in class!
The
novel is narrated by a middle aged man whose name, if given, is
unimportant. He’s an intellectual, a photographer, a writer
perhaps. Certainly he’s a keen observer with a talent for vivid
description.
Here
is the first paragraph of the novel:
September.
It seems these luminous days will never end. The city, which was
almost empty during August, now is filling up again. It is being
replenished. The restaurants are all reopening, the shops. People are
coming back from the country, the sea, from trips on roads all jammed
with cars. The station is very crowded. There are children, dogs,
families with old pieces of luggage bound by straps. I make my way
among them. It’s like being in a tunnel. Finally I emerge onto the
brilliance of the quai, beneath
a roof of glass panels which seems to magnify the light.
The
narrator flees Paris to take up temporary residence in the house of
friends, located in the provincial French town of Autun. His motives
are a mystery. He seems melancholy, or at least moody, as he settles
into the backwater and gets to know his neighbors.
Occasionally
he returns to Paris, to participate in glittering, superficial
cocktail or dinner parties with friends. At one such event, he meets
Phillip Dean, an attractive young man from a wealthy family who has
dropped out of Yale and is traveling, rather aimlessly, around
Europe. A few weeks later, Phillip shows up at his door in Autun,
driving a borrowed vintage car, and takes the narrator touring around
the region. In a raucous club in Dijon, they meet Anne-Marie who is
hanging out with a group of black men. She is obviously not innocent
despite her long hair and sweet face. Later they encounter her
again, in Autun, and Phillip begins an affair with her.
The
nameless narrator exposes bits and pieces of Phillip’s and
Anne-Marie’s relationship, chronicling their intense physical
attraction, contrasting it with their difficulties in communication.
Patrician Phillip barely speaks French. Anne-Marie comes from a poor,
common family. Their expectations and assumptions could hardly be
more different. Still, something luminous binds them.
The
radio is playing. They undress in the winter daylight. Dean is a
little embarrassed at his condition. His prick gets hard whenever he
looks at her. He can’t help it. His chief desire is to raise her on
it, exultant, to run her up into the sunshine, into the starlight,
where she can see the world. They begin to dance a little, naked, in
the early darkness, the music thin and foreign, their feet bare on
the rug. Then they make love, she astride him, in the favorite manner
of the Roman poets, as he informs her. He lies gazing up at her, his
hands encircling her ankles. The rich smell of her falls over him. At
the bottom of it all, his eyes lingering there, the mute triangle in
which he is implanted.
How,
though, can our narrator know these intimate details? He’s not
present at these trysts, yet he describes them in achingly beautiful
language. Is the love affair only in his imagination? He clearly
identifies with young Dean, understands the younger man’s confusion
and his overwhelming desire. Are these echoes of his own youth that
he is projecting on strangers? Are Phillip and Anne-Marie merely
figments of his melancholy nostalgia?
These
questions, perhaps, are what defines A Sport and a Pastime as
literary. The narrator admits his own unreliability:
Certain
things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a
bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit. Most of
the details, though, have long since been transformed or rearranged
to bring others of them forward. Some, in fact, are obviously
counterfeit; they are no less important. One alters the past to form
the future. But there is a real significance to the pattern that
finally appears, which resists all further change.
The
sex scenes in this novel are perhaps less graphic than some I would
write, but they don’t flinch from the physical. They have an
breathless intensity that I at least found exciting. Furthermore, I
believe this arousal reflects the author’s intent. Three quarters
of the way through the book, I suspect this relationship will not end
well—or at least that it will end. Youthful passion rarely endures
in the best of circumstances.
Nevertheless,
James Salter is not suggesting that carnal desire is shameful or
trivial. Quite the contrary. It may be premature for me to comment on
the author’s final purposes in writing this gorgeous kaleidoscope
of a novel. However, he may be implying that as we age, desire, or our
memories of desire, are the only thing that really matters.
