{"id":91200,"date":"2015-10-23T12:01:28","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T16:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=91200"},"modified":"2015-10-26T13:48:07","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T17:48:07","slug":"the-lights-in-the-kitchen-were-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/23\/the-lights-in-the-kitchen-were-on\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lights in the Kitchen Were On"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the table with James Salter.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Salter in 1989. Photo: Sally Gall<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cTo revisit the past was like constantly crossing some Bergschrund<\/em>,\u201d James Salter writes in the introduction to his 1997 memoir, \u201ca deep chasm between what my life had been before I changed it completely and what it was afterwards.\u201d As it did through his life, an ineludible divide runs through Salter\u2019s work. The same man who gave us great novels and stories of sport, of war and deprivation, produced some of the twentieth century\u2019s most sumptuous meditations on domestic life, on the rituals at the heart of bonding. To read him in both modes is to pace the fullness of Salter\u2019s emotional life\u2014it is akin to entering a room full of people after completing some feat of endurance, a vow of silence or a rigorous fast, and trying to hear every word. What unites Salter\u2019s oeuvre\u2014more than his triumphs of style, the peculiar manipulations of perspective, and the verbless descriptive clauses\u2014is his preoccupation with meals and all that they represent, all they can give and all they can take away.<\/p>\n

In 1957, with his first book already published, Salter left the Air Force to become the novelist that he knew he was. As his identity was transformed\u2014from fighter pilot to fiction writer, from that of struggle within the military complex to the isolation he encountered outside of it\u2014so were his novels and stories. Food\u2019s role in them increasingly became a metric for the emotional lives of his characters, who were either driven by the rejection of home or by some elaborate performance that kept the idea of home intact. The dinner table, Salter understood, was the perfect stage for the frailty of our relationships\u2014how we present ourselves to others, how crucial to our sense of self are the recollections of the friends who saw us become the people we were. A much-cited quotation from Light Years<\/em> perhaps most perfectly encapsulates his feelings about life in the air as a pilot and on the ground as a family man: \u201cLife is weather. Life is meals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2006, with his wife Kay, James Salter published Life Is Meals: A\u00a0Food Lover\u2019s Book of Days<\/a><\/em>. It\u2019s a book that defies classification, jumping from historical anecdote to cherished recipe to childhood memory without warning or apology, as the conversation at the best dinner party often does. It\u2019s as warm as it is biting, as full of tenderness for the people who populated the couple\u2019s parties as it is cruel toward those who detracted from otherwise perfect brunches or suppers. We watch Alice Waters, having been snubbed by a French ma\u00eetre d\u2019, composing some very elegant hate mail. We hear the literary agent Irving Lazar phoning room service, requesting a very unappetizing meal (\u201ca soft-boiled egg, not completely cooked, a little mucous-y on top \u2026 \u201d), and, upon hearing the hotel is \u201cnot equipped to do that,\u201d replying, \u201cYou were yesterday.\u201d These stories are punch lines, anecdotes to be told to company; they are meant to reinforce a bond, to reward those with taste and wit.<\/p>\n

Salter\u2019s appreciation of all things epicurean\u2014as well as his Schadenfreude regarding gaffes in etiquette\u2014came in part from his own determined efforts to reach a certain level of sophistication. In his memoir,\u00a0Burning the Days<\/em>, he writes: \u201cMy first duck I tasted in the dining room of a silvery apartment off Fifth Avenue. Across from me, aware of nothing remarkable, sat my friend.\u201d For teenage Salter, that meal, prepared by a hired cook and hosted by the platinum blonde mother of his childhood companion, became a hallowed goal, a place he might reach after he\u2019d surpassed his middle-class upbringing in a small family. He often mourned how little he knew of his ancestors. \u201cIt is the men without roots,\u201d he writes of his heritage, paraphrasing a British aristocrat, \u201cwho are the real poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a young man, Salter grew convinced that these extravagant dinners represented the life he wanted, but he believed he needed to suffer first\u2014\u201cMy life was too meager for me to know if I possessed it\u201d\u2014so, at his father\u2019s exhortations, he tested into West Point. Meals there \u201cwere a constant terror,\u201d an occasion during which one was expected to not only catch the glasses that upperclassmen hurled one\u2019s way, but to treat these frangible missiles as if they\u2019d been requested, calling out, as they flew, \u201cCup, please!\u201d<\/p>\n

Salter\u2019s uneasiness in this masculine world did not fade. He famously composed his first novel, The Hunters<\/a> <\/em>(1956), while serving as a pilot in the Korean War, and though he was received by critics then as an heir to Hemingway, the book displayed a peculiar sensitivity that set it apart from the war novels of earlier decades; nowhere to be found in Salter is that inscrutable archetypical male, the one at whose feelings the reader can only guess. After a bland meal in a mess hall, the protagonist of The Hunters<\/em> has \u201cthe feeling of Christmas away from home, stranded in a cheap hotel.\u201d Other men in the book skip meals to sleep; they boast of breakfasts that are only \u201ca cigarette, a cup of coffee, and a puke\u201d\u2014but behind their braggadocio is an awareness of the cost of their experience, of what\u2019s been sacrificed to fly these planes: the world of romantic love, family, friendship unthreatened by the likelihood of sudden death, home-cooked supper. In The Arm of Flesh<\/em> (1961), Salter\u2019s second novel (revised and republished as Cassada<\/em> in 2000) a weary flight captain mourns the chance for connection afforded by a long, comfortable meal:<\/p>\n

\n

There was suddenly a great deal Isbell wanted to say. They could have talked. They could have pushed their plates aside and leaned forward on their elbows, talking while the dust floated sideways through bolts of sunshine and the eggs turned cold, but it didn\u2019t quite happen. The moments don\u2019t fulfill themselves always. Somehow they started eating in silence and it was impossible to begin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The publication of his second book seemed to give Salter the permission he needed to \u201cpossess\u201d his life, and he left the armed forces to find a seat at another, more comfortable table.<\/p>\n

The sixties were not the fertile decade he\u2019d hoped for: his first two books had not brought outsize success, and his immersion in family life seemed to inspire in him a longing for anything else. When he\u2019d chased glory, he\u2019d craved peace\u2014but his newfound quiet, it turned out, included few medals, and he felt largely unseen. In Korea he had flown with Ed White and Gus Grissom, whom he watched become some of our nation\u2019s first astronauts. Salter, to support his children, tried his hand at selling pools, and he turned his gifted imagination on the prospect of suicide. A Sport and a Pastime<\/a><\/em> (1967) seems a clear result of this transitory and disappointed period; the novel concerns a young man, Dean, who has abandoned his life in America, and his equally lost French lover, Anne-Marie. It unfolds almost exclusively in the hotels and restaurants of the south of France, places that require no commitments and offer comforts at a steep price.<\/p>\n

Salter\u2019s interest in the meal gained definition in Pastime<\/em>; the outset of the liaison is marked by \u201ca wonderful dinner. She is talkative and happy. The food seems spread around her like vegetables to a roast.\u201d But the descriptions of \u201ca dish piled high with ecrevisses<\/em>, pale, salty,\u201d and \u201ca restaurant filled with the soft clatter of plates, a long dinner that seems almost a reminiscence they are so pleased\u201d serve as proof of the relationship\u2019s specious pantomime of connection. Anne-Marie, who was raised very poor, often doesn\u2019t know how to eat these dishes, and Dean, whose French is limited, often cannot order them without embarrassment. His (borrowed) money runs out and they can no longer afford such luxuries; his money comes back and they spend it on an exorbitant prix-fixe affair, much too large, which Anne-Marie fails to finish despite Dean\u2019s cold urging. In one of the book\u2019s most telling moments, she \u201cvomits up the whole meal at her feet, frogs\u2019 legs and oysters splashing onto the stones. He glances around and is relieved to find no one is watching.\u201d The meal, Salter wants us to grasp, though seductive on the surface, is an event that can summon our lesser selves, extracting the truths we\u2019ve resisted. Rich food and ambiance may deepen an existing happiness, but they can\u2019t inspire contentment where there was none before.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

From the first-edition cover of Light Years<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

The year 1975 brought Light Years<\/a><\/em>, widely considered Salter\u2019s masterpiece, a prolonged reflection on all things prandial: the preparation and presentation of a meal, the way a shift in course moves conversation, the delicate science of seating arrangements, the praise (both sincere and hollow) that home cooking inspires. One of the book\u2019s greatest achievements is its dynamic opening, narrated in a first-person plural that focuses our attention on the protagonists, Viri and Nedra Berland, and never appears again. (\u201cWe strolled in the garden, eating the small, bitter apples. The trees were dry and gnarled. The lights in the kitchen were on.\u201d) The book\u2019s first fifteen pages comprise a dinner party, convincing us of the Berlands\u2019 magnetism, connection, and generosity:<\/p>\n

\n

Country dinners, the table dense with glasses, flowers, all the food one could eat, dinners ending in tobacco smoke, a feeling of ease. Leisurely dinners. The conversation never lapses. Their life is special, devout \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But the moment Salter has invited us in, he carries us right out, into the departing car of the Berlands\u2019 dinner guests. Of Nedra, a character remarks, \u201c \u2018She\u2019s the most selfish woman on earth.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the novel follows this pattern, shaping our understanding then reversing it, presenting a portrait of a marriage by turns intimate and duplicitous. Viri and Nedra routinely sleep with other people\u2014usually guests at their table\u2014which seems, for a time, to bring them closer, as though the external fulfillment of lust leaves their attachment stronger. Even as their union crumbles, their need to entertain persists; we watch them bicker about the seasonal appropriateness of gazpacho, eat \u201cchocolate and pears,\u201d just-picked green tomatoes, \u201ccheese, bread, cucumbers, butter and wine.\u201d Neither, after the divorce, successfully establishes a new life, instead pursuing trips they had never managed to take together, eating alone in European caf\u00e9s. The view widens and we watch their daughters become people with careers and sex lives. Though Salter could imbue any moment with a lachrymose, sonorous quality, he knew how to wield that power; he knew when the absence of intensity gave more than the presence. The last time we see Nedra alive, ill and living in a rented farm shed, she says only, \u201cWe should really go out to dinner once or twice \u2026 There\u2019s a Greek place run by two brothers that isn\u2019t bad. We can have moussaka.<\/em>\u201d How peculiar, Salter seems to posit, that this type of fleeting gratification should be what we think of in our last days. Life is meals, indeed, and they vanish from our plates all too quickly.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Salter scrawled title ideas for Light Years<\/i> on a napkin. Image courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center.<\/p><\/div>\n

Though ultimately Salter furnished himself with a comfortable life, he never fully relinquished the idea that going without was what taught us most. He spent the second half of his career writing alternately about those who refuse to make a home and those consumed by it. Solo Faces<\/a><\/em> (1979) chronicles the itinerant life of a renowned rock climber, Rand, whose inveterate need to abandon places and people causes others great pain, and who is said, at the close of the novel, to have, \u201c \u2026 somehow succeeded. He had found the great river. He was gone.\u201d Nine of ten stories in Salter\u2019s 2005 collection,\u00a0Last Night<\/em>, deal with the consequences of a meal, sometimes one finished years before. A spurned girlfriend surfaces decades later, still angry, to ask, \u201cWhatever happened to that picture of us taken at that lunch Diana Wald gave at her mother\u2019s house that day? \u2026 Do you still have that?\u201d<\/p>\n

The eighty-one-year-old James Salter who cowrote an eccentric treatise on the meal seemed, by all accounts, to have reconciled the former iterations of himself with the current, final model. He had finally become the person he wanted to be: one who he could write with authority about which cheese to pair with which fruit, and with humor about the AT-6 plane he had once flown right into a family\u2019s kitchen in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. A section on etiquette in Life Is Meals<\/em> lists eight criteria, the last of which leave us a broad picture of Salter, an artist forever negotiating the distance between our interior lives and those we contrive to share:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2014The ultimate courtesy is to make guests feel comfortable in whatever they are doing.
\n\u2014There are occasions when etiquette is pitched overboard. Then it is every man for himself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the spring of 2013, James Salter published his last novel, All That Is<\/a>. <\/em>One evening in May, I was lucky enough to stand in a small anteroom where a group of twenty people would receive him after a much-anticipated reading and talk. A table ran the floor toward the windows, through which the offices of midtown Manhattan could be seen going dark. Almost no one touched the herbed cheeses or the wet grapes or the speared shrimp, though most held up a glass of wine, and the talk was quiet as we waited, even the introductions made in the tone of apologies. Then all the shoulders in the room began to rotate, and there he was in the doorframe, his suit cataract blue and his hair not quite tamed. He held up his hands to greet a friend in a gesture like that of someone demonstrating the size of a caught fish, and he cycled around the table like that, popping cubes of cheese into his mouth, slipping his arm around the back of one person while he spoke to another, saying \u201cPardon?,\u201d gesturing with toothpicks at women across the meat platters, moving all the parts of his face as he spoke or laughed. All the white wine was gone, someone said, and the red was going fast. Then something crucial changed, but it took a while for the information to pass through the crowd, through the conversations that had gained warmth and momentum. Though his presence had been the reason for our gathering there, his exit went almost unnoticed, so completely had he changed the room.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Alcott is the author of two novels, <\/em>Infinite Home<\/a> and <\/em>The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the table with James Salter. \u201cTo revisit the past was like constantly crossing some Bergschrund,\u201d James Salter writes in the introduction to his 1997 memoir, \u201ca deep chasm between what my life had been before I changed it completely and what it was afterwards.\u201d As it did through his life, an ineludible divide runs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":883,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5027],"tags":[2112,19932,16698,5562,71,115,369,19931,2093,657,12612,16373,7738,747,2132,18521],"class_list":["post-91200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-food","tag-a-sport-and-a-pastime","tag-air-force","tag-community","tag-dinner","tag-fiction","tag-food","tag-james-salter","tag-life-is-meals","tag-light-years","tag-marriage","tag-masculinity","tag-meals","tag-military","tag-novels","tag-solo-faces","tag-the-hunters"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Lights in the Kitchen: Food in the Work of James Salter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kathleen Alcott, the author of Infinite Home, looks at the role of the meal in James Salter\u2019s fiction.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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