Don't Save Anything: Uncollected Essays, Articles, and Profiles

by James Salter

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

In the end, writing is like a prison, an island from which you will never be released but which is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the thoughts, the incredible joy of putting into words the essence of what you for the moment understand and with your whole heart want to believe.

Like a racehorse making its move, he began to come to the front.

Friendship is more than knowledge and intimacy. It belongs to the order of things that cannot be weighed, like sorrow, honor, and hope. It is a form of love. It lies in the heart. You can name certain of the essentials: trust, a shared view of the world, admiration, understanding, and something I value, a sense of humor. All of these are a part of it but none of them define it.

You cannot teach someone to write any more than you can teach them to be interesting.

A friend of mine ended his skiing because of this. Elated after a magnificent day, he decided to ski through a tunnel and right into town. At the last moment, he says, he discovered he had forgotten one thing—it doesn’t snow in tunnels.

The cliffs are formed of an extremely hard sandstone with surface irregularities, which provide holds. These are often very small. In the most difficult climbing there are holds no thicker than the edge of a shirt button.

“The thing is not to burn out, to control it. Don’t freak out, keep your head. You have to save your strength to the end.” The psychological element in the sport is immense. The space beneath one, the implacability of the rock, the move that must be made. Somehow you do it: on top at last.

A brilliant climb in itself is not enough to elevate someone into the pantheon. Mountains cannot be assassinated nor the heights won in a single day. The glory belongs only to those who have earned it and usually over a period of time. In this regard, the morality is absolute.

On a scale of stress from 0 to 100, where a change in residence is 20, marriage 50, and death of a spouse 100, Beast Barracks is estimated to be 300.

The glory of France is outside of Paris, in the countryside, the centuries lying dark in the cathedrals, the timeless rivers, the impossible turns of the road through small villages in one of which is Isabel’s house the likes of which you have seen many times.

There is someone’s unattributed description of the sensuous life in Cuba before Fidel. Perhaps we were smoking cigars. “In Havana,” it reads, “the woman takes the cigar in her palms and warms it over a lamp. Then she dips it in a decanter of dark rum and rolls it again. Then she puts the end in the flame of the lamp. The man takes two puffs . . .” I try to imagine who was delivering this alluring account.

I wonder why, unrelated to anything else, I find Joe Fox’s six rules for being the ideal weekend guest. Fox was a senior editor at Random House. He had been the editor for a book of mine but more notably had edited Truman Capote, Philip Roth, and Peter Matthiessen as well as others. A Philadelphian through many generations, he had certainly been to great houses. From that February evening, there are these unexplained but most likely unimpeachable rules: 1) Never arrive too early 2) Bring a gift the hostess will love 3) Stay to yourself for at least three hours a day 4) Play all their games 5) Don’t sleep in the wrong bed 6) Leave on time.

One night just after Christmas someone brought a houseguest, a young Japanese. He was probably perplexed by the customs but being, as it turned out, the son of a former prime minister of Japan, he was both socially adept and polite. He sent a thank-you letter which still hangs, framed, on the wall in the kitchen. Somewhat faded, it reads, “It was very nice to know you. Thank you very much for inviting me for a great dinner. I enjoyed your cocking very much.” The slight misspelling which makes the letter a classic is the writer’s. Courtie Barnes, who read it a few weeks later, remarked admiringly, “Incredible we could have gone to war against such a charming people.”

The first great task in life, by far the most important one, the one on which everything else depends, can be described in three words. Very simply, it is learning to speak. Language—whatever language, English, Swahili, Japanese—is the requisite for the human condition. Without it there is nothing. There is the beauty of the world and the beauty of existence, or the sorrow if you like, but without language they are inexpressible.

In the richness of language, its grace, breadth, dexterity, lies its power. To speak with clarity, brevity, and wit is like holding a lightning rod. We are drawn to people who know things and are able to express them: Dr. Johnson, Shakespeare. Language like theirs sets the tone, the language of poets, of heroes. A certain level of life, an impregnable level, belongs to them.

understood, of course—it was dogma—that a true education was based on being well read, and for ten years or more I read all I could. These were wonderful years of voyage, discovery, and self-esteem. I would never catch up with those for whom reading was a passion, but I had climbed high.

Only a few things seem certain. The future, as DeLillo put it, belongs to crowds. The megacities, like cancer, have appeared with their great extremes of poverty and wealth, their isolation from what was called the natural world with its rivers, forests, silent dawns, and nights.