I’ve read most everything Salter has written and while I didn’t expect to learn how to write a novel, I wanted to know about his writing life and the writers who meant the most to him. They include works by Balzac, Flaubert, Babel, Dreiser, Céline, Faulkner.
Salter raises the question: Why does one write? This is a question I have often pondered. To my surprise, Salter answers the question this way: …it would be truer to say that I’ve written to be admired by others, to be loved by them, to be praised, to be known. In the end that’s the only reason.”
I wonder how many writers would answer the same way?
Salter often spent time in France. He said he was always able to write there and that the French generally believe it is worthwhile to be a writer.
He spoke about the important elements in writing a novel. It’s never easy, you need to weigh each sentence, rewrite a great deal, observe closely and learn how to tell a story. “The narrative tells the story and story is the heart of things. It is the fundamental element.”
He spoke about some of the books he wrote, although he didn’t include his novel I like best, Solo Days. He described Light Years …”as being like the worn stones of conjugal life: everything ordinary, everything marvelous, everything that makes it full or makes it embittered—it goes on for years, decades, and in the end seems to have passed like things seen from a train, a meadow there, trees, houses, darkened towns, a station going by.”
The book represented the memory of those days, memories that are probably true for any marriage.
He wrote, A time comes when you are all alone, Celine wrote long before it actually happened to him, when you’ve come to the end of everything than can happen to you. It’s the end of the world, even grief, your own grief, doesn’t answer you anymore…”
And he concludes: “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 final analysis, this is the only reason I publish whatever I’ve written.
