At certain moments, life is irreversibly divided into past and future. Can we expect a writer in literature to reveal in a single sentence the entire history of a person, the complex interplay between desire and fear, hope and need—how did man end up where he is today?
Of course, people are not immediately aware of these things. It unfolds slowly like a play, and scene after scene, the actual situation of the other person changes: life is taking him to a place where everything he has cannot protect him, and will leave him barefoot and alone.
If the answer to the question is yes, then James Souter must be such a writer.
Over time, the literary world has come to recognize this "writer of writers" and "forgotten hero of contemporary American literature", with his minimalist style, complex and exquisite structure, and unchangeable certainty.
Following the critically acclaimed "Lightyear" and "A Game once a Pastime", the Republic has recently launched James Sauter's only two short story collections, "Twilight" and "Last Night", and the novel "All This" is also about to be released. The article shared today, a book review written by Philip Gurevich[1] for Twilight, also introduces Sauter's life and style.
"He was always pressuring his words to reproduce his observations and perceptions with a special precision." Perhaps that's why Sauter can be heartbreaking with just one sentence.
With just one sentence, he can break your heart
Text/Philip Gurevich
(Originally a preface to James Sauter's Twilight)
01
Whatever he has described,
All are more aroused
He was a pilot when he was young. He had always wanted to fly a fighter jet, but once during training he crashed into a house, and after six years of flying a transport plane, he became a fighter pilot. The main model he flew was the F-86. He once said that he was not the best pilot, not a "trump card",[2] but also "some drama". In 1945, at the age of twenty, he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and joined the United States Air Force.
James Sauter
This vintage may make you feel like he missed the war, but there are always other wars, and his one is in North Korea. He flew hundreds of combat missions. That experience can be read in his first novel, The Hunters: barracks life, waiting for battle, taking off, searching the skies above the Yalu River for Soviet MiG fighters, skirmishes, a desire to hit enemy planes, flying back to base with the last drop of fuel — or not being able to fly back. The book was published in 1957, and after twelve years as a pilot, he retired from the Air Force and became a writer.
The pilot's name, his real name, was James Horowitz. And this writer calls himself James Sauter. He was handsome and stylish. He lives in Europe. His prose presents a highly modernist refinement. His language is both frugal and abundant—the blank space makes the otherwise strong emotions more intense, and the fleshly passion lingers with a metaphysical breath: everything he describes is more aroused.
From the sixties to the seventies, he also wrote screenplays. He wrote The Doubtful Wife for Sidney Lumet,[4] and saw his characters incarnate as Omar Sharif,[5] Anouk Aime,[6] and Lottie Rangya. He wrote Downhill Racer for Robert Redford.[8] Later, he wrote two scripts that were eventually made into movies, and there were more than a dozen that were not made, and the irreparable damage caused by the mental effort of those works that did not see the light of day made him finally give up script writing.
During this period, he also wrote his most original and enduring novels, A Sport and a Pastime and Light Years, as well as the superb short stories in this collection of novels, Dusk.
Twilight
By James Sauter, translated by Ray Yun
These works have the extreme vividness of the film's flash, the atmosphere, the agility of jumping scissors, and the emotion of a glimpse, which makes the surface things extremely deep. Of course, to achieve these effects, Sauter used no more tools than any other writer—just words that fell to paper—so other writers noticed this and wondered how he did it.
Calling Sauter "the writer's writer," then, means that he is still flying, and in fact, he will always be flying; it also means that he has an excellent ability to control the text. In his memoir, Burning the Days, he describes the legendary adventures and repeated exercises of his pilot's career—descending from the sky to new places, each illuminated by different prospects: fraternity (with men), seduction (with women), lavish drinking, brand new beds, those strange dawns before flying into the sky again. That kind of life of flying and routines—flying as a routine—has ecstatic melancholy. Bidding farewell to the immutable constraints and regulations of military life, he flew into the boundless realm.
02
From the "Ruins of The Days"
Make something that lasts and is timeless
Sauter has said that the problem with flying life is that it is entirely alive in the present, and he turned to writing because he wanted to make something continuous and eternal from the "ruins of the days."
"Because it's all going to go away," he told the poet Edward Hirsch in a 1993 interview with the Paris Review magazine (where Sauter's first short stories were published). Humans invented books, and that's lucky. Without it, the past would be completely gone, and we would live naked on earth with nothing. ”
Reading Sauter's works gives you the feeling that he is always pressuring his words to reproduce his observations and perceptions with a special precision. In the interview, he said short stories have to be gripping, they have to be memorable, they have to be "complete in some way." Sot cited his hero Isaac Babel as an example. "He has three great elements – style, structure and certainty," he says. This is also a characteristic of Sauter's work, although these stories deal with inner experiences, and although they contain fiction and fantasy, they are all drawn from the depths of the well of life.
"There is a view that everything can be made up out of thin air, that these things that are made up are novels, and that other works that are not presumably made up are called non-novels. I think it's an arbitrary distinction," Sauter told Edward Hirsch, "that we know that most great fiction does not come entirely from fiction, but from perfect knowledge and close observation." To say that they are fabricated is an unfair description. I sometimes say that I never make up anything – obviously, that's not the truth. But I'm generally not interested in writers who claim that everything comes from imagination. I'd rather be in a room with someone who tells me his life story, which may be a bit exaggerated and even contain lies, but at the end of the day, I just want to hear the real story, and that's it. ”
For Sauter, the truth may exist in the realm of sex, or in serious confrontations with frustration and death, or in humor and energy. The first time I read the story from Twilight was twenty years ago, shortly after the book was published. I've never forgotten the beginning of America Express, and I can't help but laugh out loud, writing, "Frank's father would go to [the Four Seasons Hotel] three or four times a week, either to the Century Club or the Union Club, which was full of older men than him." Half of the members could not urinate, and according to him, the other half could not stop peeing. ”
03
Good and real writing,
It is the most appropriate way to live and die
One of the greatest pleasures of reading Souter is that he seems to allow himself to do anything. In "On the Beach in Tangier," he concludes the book with information about the characters that most writers would use as an introduction and explanation—a treatment that suddenly condenses a character's most ordinary established facts into a kind of fate. Look at the "Movie" one, in which he arranges a minor role, and then abruptly interrupts the narrative, telling us about her family life, her parents' marriage, her brother's budding insanity—and then returns to the main line of the story just as quickly, with little mention of her family. In this way, Sauter constantly refreshes the form of the short story. Even his characters themselves would be surprised.
This short story collection contains mostly love stories, many of which are lonely and frustrated, and some of which describe the life of the writer. They were created over many years and together reflect Souter's breadth of care, passion, voice and language for humanity.
When the Boy Matures, based on James Souter's Twenty Minutes
I don't have to pick out my favorite one, but I do have one—the first time I read Twilight and every time I reread it later (Sauter was one of those masters who kept rereading and marveling again), I felt as if it had chosen me. The story is "Twenty Minutes", because of its harshness and swiftness, it is immersive in every moment, and at the same time it accommodates suspense, extremely painful struggles, and moving tenderness- and because it is no more, no less, it just writes the story that happens in twenty minutes, almost in real time, and those twenty minutes present a person's life. This simultaneous condensation and extension is both emotionally and technically exciting, showing the wisdom of Sauter and the height of his artistic attainments.
"I believe there is a proper way to live and die." Sauter said in an interview with the Paris Review.
"You mean we can find it all?" Hirsch asked him.
"No," Souter said, "I don't think everybody can create it, that would be too confusing." I'm referring to the classical, ancient, cultural consensus that there are certain virtues that never fade. "Of course, his characters and the world they live in are often obscure. But he was a writer who still believed in heroism, and he made it seem that writing, when it was done well and true, was the most appropriate way to live and die.
Typography: Nine tubes
Partial image source: Martin Eden
Midnight in Paris
【Recommended Books】
Republic produced by James Sauter
A Game once a Pastime & Lightyear
exegesis:
[1] Philip Gourevitch (1961– ) is an American writer, journalist, and contributing writer for The New Yorker magazine, and former editor of the Paris Review.
[2] ACE, Ace Pilot, also known as Knockdown Ace, the title first appeared in World War I, generally refers to the shooting down of enemy aircraft to more than five pilots.
[3] Sidney Lumet (1924-2011), American film director, screenwriter, producer, representative works include "Twelve Angry Men", "The Long Night", "Murder on the Orient Express", etc., won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 77th Academy Awards in 2005.
[4] The Appointment, which was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 22nd Cannes Film Festival.
[5] Omar Sharif (1932–2015) was an Egyptian actor who starred in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.
[6] Anouk Aimée (1932– ) is a French actress from an acting family who is active in French and Italian cinema, favored by directors such as Fellini and Jacques Demi, and won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2003.
[7] Lotte Lenya (1898–1981), born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later emigrated to the United States, is an actress and singer who played the villain role in the 007 film series.
[8] Robert Redford (1936- ), American director and actor, starred in films including "The Great Gatsby", "Out of Africa", "Big River Love", etc., won the 53rd Academy Awards Best Director Award, the 74th Academy Awards Lifetime Achievement Award. The Sundance Film Festival, founded by Redford, is the world's premier independent film festival.
《Living Color》Last Night》