Burning the Days

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In this brilliant recollection, one of America's finest writers re-creates people, places, and events over fifty years, capturing an entire era through a singular sensibility. Scenes of love, desire, friendship, and ambition are rendered in the unique style for which James Salter is admired. The narrative begins with a Manhattan boyhood, fulfilling his father's wishes by graduating from West Point and serving as a pilot in the Air Force. Salter evokes the exhilaration and terror of combat as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, balanced by haunting reflections on love and a young man's passion for women. After resigning from the Air Force, he embarks on a second life as a writer in 1960s New York, where the allure of film draws him in. Vivid portraits of actors, directors, and influential writers, like Irwin Shaw, populate his journey. Ultimately, this memoir illuminates manhood and the writing process, standing alongside works like Nabokov's Speak, Memory and Dinesen's Out of Africa. Unconventionally structured, it is a stunning achievement that The Washington Post Book World praises as inhabiting rarefied heights alongside literary greats—a rare and unforgettable exploration of life and creativity.