Product Description

A singular life often circles around a singular moment, an occasion when one's life in the world is defined forever and the emotional vocabulary set. For the extraordinary writer James Salter—recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award—this moment was contained in the fighter planes over Korea where, during his young manhood, he flew more than one hundred missions. The editors have gathered selections and photographs from a journal Salter kept during the Korean War, published here for the first time, and assembled selections from two novels, The Hunters and Cassada, and from the author's celebrated memoir, Burning the Days. As commented in a brief introduction, "It is, as a record of the day-to-day, mission-to-mission life of a young fighter pilot, a remarkable document by any standard. But it provides as well a view into the 'crucible of a writer's beginnings, like pencil studies that precede a painting, in which the essential qualities of the artist's hand are unmistakable.'"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #248866 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A splendid thing in a small package is this flying book compiled from several earlier works of fiction (including the great novel of Korean War aviation, The Hunters) and memoir, and from Salter's journals. Salter graduated from West Point in 1945 and went straight into the Army Air Force, later the U.S. Air Force. His training was not always smooth—he once lost his way over Pennsylvania and crashed into a house in Massachusetts. But he survived to qualify in fighters and to fly a tour of duty (100 missions) in Korea in F-86s, shooting down one MiG. After the war Salter flew fighters in Europe before resigning from the air force to embark upon a distinguished literary career. The text has excerpts from The Hunters; another novel about the European years, Cassada; his previous memoir Burning the Days; and an unpublished diary from the Korean tour. Although it's sometimes difficult to tell whose voice one is hearing, all the voices have a superb command of the English language and vividly depict the sensations and human interactions involved in flying.
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From Booklist
Award-winning novelist Salter is a West Point graduate and was a pilot in the Korean War. The missions he flew over Korea form not only the basis of his fiction but also the foundation on which he built much of the rest of his life. This book, concerned with his flying years, draws from a journal he kept at the time, from the novels The Hunters (1956) and cassada (2000), and from his memoir Burning the Days (1997). The journal sections, in particular, amount to a jump back to a time and place largely forgotten except by those who were there; the whole book is valuable for that alone, though those interested in the genesis of Salter's writing will highly appreciate it. Above all, the book collocates some of the finest aviation writing of the twentieth century, otherwise hard to find, if not altogether out of print. Let us hope this book will inspire the reprinting of some of those from which it extracts. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Sun, stars, water and clouds
James Salter ranks among the finest writers in America, a stylist of extraordinary skill, and this new book about his F-86 flying experiences in Korea demonstrates his remarkable abilities.
However seeming simple the basic act, writing well is as difficult as flying well, and flows from a lifetime of patient, humble practice and learning. The precision with which Salter puts words together, and the pleasure and satisfaction a reader derives from assimilating those words, transcend the subject matter and move to the sublime. Salter is a master craftsman who works with a deceptive effortlessness that distills essence and emotion into forms that drive directly to the point. Every reader who likes great writing will enjoy this book and will learn from it not just about the subject matter but about the art of literary composition.
In other words, one need not be a pilot to enjoy Salter's work in this new book, assembled from material that is now half a century old. He does not clutter it up with unnecessary technicalities (flying jet fighters is complex). His book SOLO FACES (see my review) shows that he is a writer who can capture the heart of the matter and convey it to the reader's mind with lyrical literary skill.
The production values of this book deserve mention: Shoemaker/Hoard is a relatively small Press who obviously lavish meticulous attention on their work, and it shows.
Why "Sun, stars, water and clouds" as the title of this review? The words are taken from Salter's book, page 121, describing what the ancients claimed are the greatest things to be seen. What better place to see them than from a fighter cockpit?

A Wonderful Collection
This was my introduction to James Salter and it was the book that made me interested in his writing. One of the wonderful aspects about Gods is not simply that it contains Salters wonderful writing, but also that the editors have managed to collect the best pasages from a number of his books. After reading Cassada, Burning the Days and the Hunters, I returned to this volume and found that nearly every one of my favorite passages on flying (achieving competence or learning "equitation" as he puts it at one point) from these books appears in Gods. And a bonus are the excerpts from Salter's jounals as a fighter jock driving F-86s in combat in Korea: these sometimes read like poetry leaving an image that has the feel of a Turner watercolor -- a couple of colorful strokes that still give a strong sense of the energy and paradoxically tranquility of moments flying. Originally in Burning: "I will never see it again or, just this way all that is below. Some joys exist in retrospect, but not this, the serenity, the cities shining in detailed splendor."

Old Material Beautifully Integratred and Presented.
Having read some for the works from which this book takes much of its content I was prepared to be disappointed; however, Salter has woven the material into a much tighter and stronger work. It's clear that he looked back at the old material with improved writing skills and a more mature handling of the nature of warfare in the early days of the jets.

He captures the isolation of these modern day knights of the air, the randomness of early aerial engagements in the first jet on jet conflict and one which was further complicated by the political restrictions which put the bases on the north side of the Yalu off limits. With the possible exception of the middle-east the Korean war probably marked the last engagement of large numbers of American aircraft in air to air combat over a small area.

Highly recommended, especially for those who who have enjoyed his other works. Deserves a place on the bookshelf between Stranger to The Ground, Night Flight, Tom Wolfe's writings on flight and other literate classics on the challenge and characters in flying.

For those wanting to know more about the why of the Korean air engagements Robert Cornan's "Boyd The Story of a Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Course of War" is most enlightening.

Like Wind, Sand and Stars the book has a very broad appeal that is not limited to pilots. Great gift for someone who appreciates good writing.