About this title: Touring Paris and provincial France in a handsome borrowed car, Philip Dean, Yale dropout, has an affair with a young French woman named Anne-Marie. Their liaison is imagined with candour and sensitivity by an unnamed narrator, whose fantasies become compellingly and hauntingly real. "A Sport and A Pastime" has been hailed as a watershed in American fiction of the 1960s: remarkable for its eroticism, its luminous prose and its ability to blur the boundaries of reality and dreamlife, daytime and nightime, soul and flesh. 'A tour de force in erotic realism, a romantic cliffhanger, an opaline ...
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Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date Published: 2006-08-22
ISBN-13:9780374530501ISBN:0374530505
Description: Good. Every heavytail order includes with a sweet! We carefully hand clean and reinspect each and every item we ship. Our quality control process ensures items to be in the condition described or better. Heavytail is determined to earn your repeat business through old fashioned customer service. We love international orders. read more
"James Salter's "A Sport and a Pastime" is very controlled but the writing is such a pleasure that the manipulation doesn't feel dirty. I picked this on the strength of Richard Ford's blurb as Ford is one of my all-time favorites. I can see why Ford likes it. But, for me, Ford is doing this kind of writing on another level. Because I'm getting old, I'll stick with Ford. If you decide to read this one - and it's a quick, interesting, provocative read to be sure - make sure to pair your readings with a glass of wine. Something French."
"Starts in a manner that irks more than it pleases but line after exquisite line breaks your heart and thrills your mind - too many lines to pause over, too many delightful metaphors to quote - and not overwhelming but just enough, like an ideal trace of perfume on the neck of a beautiful woman. That effusiveness noted - I really did enjoy the reveries, the 'luminous' touches - it fails to light my fire. That's not the fault of the author but me, the reader; it's just not the kind of novel that sets me afire. However, it is in many ways a masterful experience that could easily become a favorite for another type of personality."
"I don't understand why the critics praise his writing so much; I was totally disappointed. Supposed to have beautiful, parsimonious writing, but to me it seemed like he threw metaphors around willy nilly and it was really annoying. I didn't like any of the characters and found the whole "is it real or a fantasy thing" super gimmicky and irritating... I think I saw it was related to a thread about alpha male fiction on Amazon and that seemed pretty appropriate."
"Mesmerizing and, ultimately, frightening. I love Salter's sparse prose. And his descriptions of sleepy French towns make me feel like I've experienced the country when, in fact, I've merely experienced French Dip Sandwiches."
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