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11298James Salter161826602009-10-16T05:35:43-07:001453926742009-10-16T05:35:43-07:0042falseTue Nov 10 00:00:00 -0800 2009Tue Aug 11 04:47:38 -0700 2009Tue Nov 10 05:08:03 -0800 2009
Dusk and Other Stories did win the PEN/Faulkner award when it was first released in 1989. And this collection did become a textbook for dedicated short story writers -- maybe not as popular with the general reading public as Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, but more of an insider's pick, like the films of Sam Fuller. The sad fact is that I had to read a photocopy of one of the out-of-print editions that someone was gracious enough to loan me.
The main reason short story writers gravitate towards this book is the prose. Short, punchy and poetic. Salter can say more about a character in a few sparsely worded sentences than most writers can in an entire chapter. Salter wasn’t just hacking away at his sentences for pure economy, he was pairing down his prose to its barest bones, leaving only what he felt was utterly necessary. When writing coaches and teachers scribble “show don’t tell” or “don’t over-write” on countless stories, they are trying to turn their protégés into Salter. A character’s actions speak volumes. A few lines of dialogue become an entire biography.
For example, there is this sudden turn in “The Cinema” where we find out a rising actor’s ultimate fate:
“Guivi was thirty-seven. He had a moment on the screen that would never be forgotten. Tinted posters of him would peel from the sides of buildings more and more remote, the resemblance fading.”
In the more powerful stories -- “The Cinema,” “Twenty Minutes,” “Foreign Shores,” “Dusk,” “Via Negative,” “The Destruction of the Goetheanum” and “Dirt” -- Salter has boiled down his prose to its barest, razor sharp essences, with tales of people who wake up one day (as the collection’s title suggests) to realize that life is winding down and the journey has not turned out as expected.
If one were to suppose why Salter is not as well remembered as other short story writers, it might be – like Mavis Gallant, another oft-forgotten master of short story writing – that some of the stories have a hard time resonating with the reader. This is not due to a fault of the writer, it is not the prose that fails, but rather the characters. Many of the stories in Dusk... are about lost souls, weary travelers (as were Gallant’s) and wayward citizens who suddenly find themselves trapped, drifting towards an inevitable dead end, unable to avoid it even if they are aware of their fate. When the story resonates, the reader feels an emotional tie to these characters, as you do for Hedges in “The Destruction of the Goetheanum” or Nile in “Via Negativa.” But when the characters fail to elicit any response from the reader, the stories seem to fall flat. At a certain point, and this is the case with a few of the stories, you could give a damn about the ennui of upper-crust people (Alan and Frank in “American Express” are a good example).
However, the good far outshines the not-so-good in this collection. Even if one of the stories falls flat at the end, the lead up is stellar. For Salter’s superb prose alone, Dusk... should be read, studied, and read again. The better tales are crisp, sharp, and leave you in awe of Salter’s ability to make you reread sentences over and over again, reveling in the spare descriptions that speak volumes.
Thankfully, the book will finally be back in print when Random House releases a new edition in Summer 2010. In the meantime, go searching in your local used book shop.]]>