Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Salter, James - Ned Rorem (review date 6 March 1988)

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Ned Rorem (review date 6 March 1988)

SOURCE: Rorem, Ned. “The Artistry of James Salter.” Washington Post Book World (6 March 1988): 1-2.

[In the following positive assessment of Dusk and Other Stories, Rorem describes Salter's work as having a French sensibility.]

Although still something of a cult figure, James Salter, because of his short fiction, inhabits the same rarefied heights as such establishment idols as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams (whose stories are much superior to his plays) and John Cheever. Like that of the first three, his style is opulent and his content excruciating; like Cheever's, his characters are mostly well off, youngish, suburban American WASPs who spend time in Europe. Beyond this, I'm at a loss for literary comparisons.

I have always avoided linking the arts. Despite Pater's “architecture is frozen music,” the arts are not interchangeable; if they were, we'd need only...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Richard Eder (review date 17 February 1988)
   2. Ned Rorem (review date 6 March 1988)
   3. Peter Wild (review date winter 1989)
   4. Freddie Baveystock (review date 25 May 1990)
   5. Richard Burgin (review date 1990)
   6. James Salter and Edward Hirsch (interview date summer 1993)
   7. William Dowie (essay date 1998)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright