Reynolds Price
"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know."

Review
"Salter inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, and John Cheever."--Ned Rorem, The Washington Post Book World

"A feverishly compressed, exquisitely controlled story."--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

"A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliff-hanger; an opaline vision of Americans in France . . . A Sport and a Pastime succeeds as art must. It tells us about ourselves."--The New York Times Book Review

"Salter particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure."--Susan Sontag


Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
"A feverishly compressed, exquisitely controlled story."

The New York Times Book Review
"A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliff-hanger, an opaline vision of Americans in France... A Sport and a Pastime succeeds as art must. It tells us about ourselves."

Susan Sontag
"Salter particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure."

Time
"The encounters of Dean and Anne-Marie seem not to require reading but sensing, as if the touch of the eye were almost too much for reality. And when at last the dream breaks, it is not with a shatter but a silent splintering of crystal fragments."

Richard Ford
"Sentence for sentence Salter is the master."

Review
"Salter inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, and John Cheever."--Ned Rorem, The Washington Post Book World

"A feverishly compressed, exquisitely controlled story."--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

"A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliff-hanger; an opaline vision of Americans in France . . . A Sport and a Pastime succeeds as art must. It tells us about ourselves."--The New York Times Book Review

"Salter particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure."--Susan Sontag


Book Description
A Sport and a Pastime is an astonishing performance, the classic novel from a remarkable writer whose sentences bristle with a singular passion. Salter chronicles a love affair between a young shopgirl and an American college dropout against the backdrop of provincial France. The narrator's cool distillation of events-real or imagined-makes the book both lyrical and tightly, dangerously pitched.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A beautiful, lyrical tale of an ill-fated love affair set against the backdrop of a myriad of small French towns, this stunning novel is observed through the eyes and imagination of a narrator who, in the story of Dean and Anne-Marie￯﾿ﾽs relationship, captures some essential aspect of what it means to be truly alive.

When we first meet Dean, a handsome Yale dropout possessed of great charm and a certain confident aloofness, he seems a man for whom life is easy and effortless. During what is intended to be a brief holiday in France, Dean pursues a passionate affair with Anne-Marie, an alluring, beautiful young shopgirl who is wise beyond her years and experience. Driving across the countryside in his elegant, somewhat dilapidated Delage, they stop at picturesque hotels and engage in romantic trysts that build in intimacy and ardor. Issues of class prove a stumbling block for Dean, however, and as Anne-Marie begins to shed her doubts about him, he vacillates between envisioning a comfortable life with Anne-Marie and wanting to escape from her suffocating proximity. The narrator keenly and acutely observes and imagines the lovers￯﾿ﾽ public sojourns and private embraces, interpreting both his own voyeurism and their affair as criminal acts. In A Sport and a Pastime, Salter has created a perfect gem of a book, at once an erotic masterpiece and a haunting, transcendent examination of humanity and sexual desire.

FROM THE CRITICS

Time

The encounters of Dean and Anne-Marie seem not to require reading but sensing, as if the touch of the eye were almost too much for reality. And when at last the dream breaks, it is not with a shatter but a silent splintering of crystal fragments.

Reynolds Price

As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know.

Ned Rorem - The Washington Post Book World

Salter inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, and John Cheever.

New York Times Book Review

A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliff-hanger, an opaline vision of Americans in France... A Sport and a Pastime succeeds as art must. It tells us about ourselves. (The New York Times Book Review).

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

"A Sport And A Pastime is a masterpiece." — Kenneth Koch

"In its percular compound of lucid surface and dark interior, its as nearly perfect as any American fiction know." — Reynolds Price