SOURCE: Rorem, Ned. “The Artistry of James Salter.” Washington Post Book World (6 March 1988): 1-2.

In the following positive assessment of Dusk and Other Stories, Rorem describes Salter's work as having a French sensibility.

Although still something of a cult figure, James Salter, because of his short fiction, inhabits the same rarefied heights as such establishment idols as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams (whose stories are much superior to his plays) and John Cheever. Like that of the first three, his style is opulent and his content excruciating; like Cheever's, his characters are mostly well off, youngish, suburban American WASPs who spend time in Europe. Beyond this, I'm at a loss for literary comparisons.

I have always avoided linking the arts. Despite Pater's “architecture is frozen music,” the arts are not interchangeable; if they were, we'd need only one. Yet at times, confronted by James Salter's unique verbal...