There and Then: The Travel Writing of James Salter

James Salter's writing style reminds me of Ernest Hemingway's. It is tight, crisp and colorful, intense and meaningful. The 17 chapters of this book, each capable of standing alone, display Salter's ability to find essential meaning in ordinary people, events and places. Yet his prose paints such glorious and beautiful word-pictures. The settings are from cities and places you may or may never get to see -- Paris, the Loire, Trier on the Moselle, Basel, skiing in Kitzbuhel and other famous Alpine venues, the Tyrol, Sussex in England, rural Japan, the Colorado western mountains, memories of eastern Long Island and, to set the tone of what's to come, the experience of having to declare at customs what it is, exactly, that you bring back from your travels. But the times in which these stories are set, well, they are gone and lost forever. We can experience them now only through the recollections of those who were "there and then". And, Salter is one of the best when it comes to bringing his memories to life and making them meaningful for us now.