Gods of Tin: The Flying Years

by James Salter, Jessica Benton (Editor), William Benton (Editor)

Overview

A singular life often circles around a singular moment, an occasion when one's life in the world is defined forever and the emotional vocabulary set. For the extraordinary writer James Salter, this moment was contained in the fighter planes over Korea where, during his young manhood, he flew more than one hundred missions.



James Salter is considered one of America's greatest prose stylists. The Arm of Flesh (later revised and retitled Cassada) and his first novel, The Hunters, are legendary in military circles for their descriptions of flying and aerial combat. A former Air Force pilot who flew F–86 fighters in Korea, Salter writes with matchless insight about the terror and exhilaration of the pilot's life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582439112
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	11/10/2005
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

James Salter was a novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and essayist. Born in 1925, Salter grew up in New York City and was a career officer and Air Force pilot until his mid–thirties, when the success of his first novel The Hunters led to a fulltime writing career. Salter’s potent, lyrical prose has earned him acclaim from critics, readers, and fellow novelists. He was the recipient of a PEN/Faulkner Award and the PEN/Malamud Award, among others. His novel A Sport and a Pastime was hailed by the New York Times as “nearly perfect as any American fiction.” His other books include Cassada and Light Years. He died on June 19, 2015, at ninety years old.

Editorial Reviews

Salter is the rare stylist whose prose, however complex, always streaks across the page at the perfect pace. He will swing between a feverish, mile-a-minute tempo and an equally dramatic slow-motion attention to detail, often in the same paragraph. Anyone interested in military or aviation history will find a lot to savor in Gods of Tin.
— The Washington Post

Andrew Ervin

A splendid thing in a small package is this flying book compiled from several earlier works of fiction (including the great novel of Korean War aviation, The Hunters) and memoir, and from Salter's journals. Salter graduated from West Point in 1945 and went straight into the Army Air Force, later the U.S. Air Force. His training was not always smooth-he once lost his way over Pennsylvania and crashed into a house in Massachusetts. But he survived to qualify in fighters and to fly a tour of duty (100 missions) in Korea in F-86s, shooting down one MiG. After the war Salter flew fighters in Europe before resigning from the air force to embark upon a distinguished literary career. The text has excerpts from The Hunters; another novel about the European years, Cassada; his previous memoir Burning the Days; and an unpublished diary from the Korean tour. Although it's sometimes difficult to tell whose voice one is hearing, all the voices have a superb command of the English language and vividly depict the sensations and human interactions involved in flying. (Oct.) Forecast: For lovers of superior aviation writing, this book will be a treat; its appearance may help bring some of the author's other books back into print. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly