Last Night - James Salter [0]
Title Page
Praise
LAST NIGHT - James Salter
Comet
Eyes of the Stars
My Lord You
Such Fun
Give
Platinum
Palm Court
Bangkok
Arlington
Last Night
Acknowledgments
Also by James Salter
Copyright Page
Acclaim for James Salter’s LAST NIGHT
“Last Night is a book for anyone who’s ever loved, lusted, or longed. This mature collection of ten stories is sexy and somber at the same time. . . . The title story is an unforgettable masterpiece that could rank with Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Lady with the Dog’ as one of the great stories of contemporary literature. . . . Salter astonishes us and is as unpredictable as life itself.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“[Salter’s] stories unfold with dreamlike fluidity in an atmosphere of shadows and indistinct forms, like watercolors in a dark palette. . . . It’s a measure of James Salter’s writerly gifts that one wishes each of his stories longer. . . . Fascinating, lyric, memorable, poignant, harrowing, powerful.”
—The New York Review of Books
“Unpredictably brilliant. . . . Beautiful. . . . Salter is still writing taboo-breaking stories. Their aim [is] to prick through pomposity to the person beneath. . . . Brazen and honest.”
—Financial Times
“A+. . . . These ten nuanced stories are marvelously taut and seamless, crafted in majestically simple prose.”
—Edge.com
“Last Night is a masterpiece of short fiction.”
—The Star-Ledger (Newark)
“The ragged tumult of intimacy has long been the province of James Salter. . . . [He] is a master at capturing that moment when matters go completely and unexpectedly awry. He then mines that moment for all its beauty, horror, poignancy, love, lust, loss, grief and confusion, and renders it in unforgettable prose.”
—The Seattle Times
“Salter writes superbly. . . . The title story, which comes last in the book, will be in anthologies for years to come. It packs a punch you didn’t think short stories delivered anymore.”
—The Toronto Star
“Masterful. . . . Exquisite. . . . In this era of chatter and distraction, James Salter’s carefully honed stories offer a welcome precision. . . . These are not contemporary snapshots of how we live now, but timeless studies of the maneuverings inherent in close relationships.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Salter captures the essence of a moment or character using only its sparest elements. Like light striking water at just the right angle, his language makes these stories shimmer with life.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“The taut, perfectly wrought short stories in the great American novelist James Salter’s Last Night show that he’s still at the top of his game.”
—Vanity Fair
“Stunning. . . . James Salter is an extraordinary writer, probably among the very best we have. And anyone who has the least bit of interest in stories or in what it means to be human should be thrilled that a new book by him is appearing. . . . Salter’s magic with the language can take one’s breath away.”
—The Southampton Press
“Despite Salter’s (deserved) position among the upper reaches of contemporary authors of literature, he’s also something else: extremely accessible.”
— The Tampa Tribune
“Paradise, in Salter’s fiction, has always already been lost. His characters drift, drink, stumble, sink, tempt others to sin and sin themselves. Yet the memory of a greener time persists, if only in his prose. While reading it, how happy one is.”
—Chicago Tribune
“James Salter is one of a handful of writers whose name is uniformly uttered in reverence by fellow writers. . . . Salter can toss off sentences [that] stop you cold in their lyric precision seemingly at will, two or three on every page. . . . The work of an American master.”
—The Hartford Courant
LAST NIGHT
James Salter
VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
VINTAGE BOOKS
A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.
NEW YORK
George Plimpton
hadada
Comet
PHILIP MARRIED ADELE on a day in June. It was cloudy and the wind was blowing. Later the sun came out. It had been a while since Adele had married and she wore white: white pumps with low heels, a long white skirt