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Title: Who cares?
Review: I admire James Salter's Hemingway-styled sentences, or sentence fragments. They are pointed and powerful. They tell you a lot in a very few words, just like Papa did. The only problem I have, and it's a big problem, is that I don't give a hoot about his characters. They are a bunch of upper middle class snobs whose only problem is who is screwing who. They have nothing to overcome except their own pettiness and their stupid lives. Maybe that's Salter's point, but it is not interesting. Of course I may be jaundiced because I have been reading Toni Morrison and Erskine Caldwell and Richard Wright, whose characters were trying to find something to eat or pay the rent. These people had real problems. If you read a book just for the writing then Salter is your man, but if you want characters you care about, then skip this crap,unless you're a snob yourself.Ed Arnold
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