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William Powers and Martha Sherrill

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from: Martha Sherrill

Salter Rehabilitated

Posted Thursday, June 8, 2000, at 5:11 PM ET

My dear Thurston,

I am the empress of my own reading world, yes! And indeed, "James Salter" is now freezing in the salt mines at the end of greatness. While he wasn't found guilty of memoir fraud in court (too little evidence, a spineless judge), I'm not sure I need to re-read him. Besides, I want people to buy his books and decide for themselves.

Read his exquisite descriptions of flying an airplane at night! Read his poetic musings about the sunlight in the South of France in September. Everything happens in autumn! And at dusk! In all honesty, who cares what his last name used to be? He just wanted a more beautiful one, a glorious one. An autumn sunset of a name. And he deserves it.

Meanwhile, I feel vaguely sad about how we've demeaned the "Breakfast Table" with our various obsessions and judgments and self-absorption. Have you noticed there's been a motif? We went from dead squids to lifeless nudes to airplane crashes to Moby Dick and eventually landed on the literary carcasses of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. (And come to think of it, it's possible that James Salter died when we were in Japan.) You even had to flaunt your lack of sexual interest in 70-year-old women. Fear of death was everywhere. God, I think we even bored "The Fray" into silence.

So now it's back to just the two of us, my dear. You and me. And our little e-mails to each other. Of course, they'll be a little different next week, won't they?

xoxo
martha

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Martha Sherrill

Salter Rehabilitated

Posted Thursday, June 8, 2000, at 5:11 PM ET
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William Powers writes a weekly column on the media for National Journal magazine. Martha Sherrill is a former staff writer for the Washington Post, a contributing editor at Esquire, and the author of The Buddha from Brooklyn (click here to buy it).
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Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the final entry:


Would I rather die with Vanity Fair's McDonald's Happy Meal in hand compared to The New Yorker's Chicken Kiev [Tuesday]? I'll put it to you this way. Were the plane I was travelling on about to plunge into the Atlantic, I think I would prefer to be found in the company of a beautifully presented albeit content-lite Vanity Fair reader who was willing to share the last few moments of our lives in sweaty, unseemly embrace than with our solid, reassuring and cautious friend of the New Yorker. Long live VF!

--Brendan

(To reply, click here.)

[ Ckeav says: I think it would be better to die with a copy of the old New Yorker in hand, like a 1973 issue you just haven't gotten to yet.]



I know what you mean about those hokey hometown newspapers [Tuesday]. I feel exactly the same way when I read the Post. But aren't those darling local journalists just so cute for trying?

--Q-Chan

(To reply, click here.)

Light Years was just about my favorite book until I began reading Burning the Days. I was amazed when I read what you wrote about Salter [Wednesday], and how he had fallen in your estimation--I am so thrilled to see that I am not the only romantic who gets attached to my notions of a writer. In order to maintain my illusions about Salter, I put Burning the Days down. His coldness and selfishness began to bother me, and I recognized so many of the characters from his life in Burning the Days. It was ruining my enjoyment of Light Years, like having the magician show you his tricks in a seedy bar when he is rudely ordering a waitress around wearing a five o'clock shadow and a dirty t-shirt. Light Years is such a beautiful book, his writing is stunning...why let his personality get in the way of my experience?

--CP

(To reply, click here.)



[Interested in Ms Sherrill's book? BT reader Mark was--he bought it on the strength of "The Breakfast Table", and reviews it here.]

(6/9)

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