 Book cover | |
| Author | James Salter |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Erotic novel |
| Set in | France |
| Published | March 3, 1967 [1] |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 191 |
| OCLC | 291893 |
A Sport and a Pastime (1967) is a novel by the American writer James Salter.
Set in France in the early 1960s, the sad and tender story concerns the erotic affair of American middle-class college drop-out Philip Dean and a young French girl, Anne-Marie, as witnessed by a self-consciously unreliable narrator. The unnamed narrator freely admits that much of his observation is in fact his own fantasy of the couple, and includes a number of sexually-explicit descriptions of their day-to-day existence as he imagines it.
Many of the story's events take place in the town of Autun in Burgundy.
The book is generally regarded by critics as a modern classic. In The New York Times Book Review , novelist and critic Reynolds Price wrote, "Of living novelists, none has produced a novel I admire more than A Sport and a Pastime ... it's as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know." [2] The critic and biographer Adam Begley, in The New York Times Magazine , called it "extraordinary ... The book feels utterly true." [3] After Salter's death in 2015, the novel has continued to receive critical attention. In 2017, Sarah Hall (writing for The Guardian ) observed that:
"Since its publication in 1967, during the decade of sexual revolution, A Sport and a Pastime has set the standard not only for eroticism in fiction, but for the principal organ of literature – the imagination. What appears at first to be a short, tragic novel about a love affair in France is in fact an ambitious, refractive inquiry into the nature and meaning of storytelling, and the reasons we are compelled to invent, in particular, romances. That such a feat occurs across a mere 200 pages is breathtaking, and though its narrative choreography seems simple, the novel is anything but minor." [4]
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed "the poet of apprehension" by novelist Graham Greene.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1920.
The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. The plot explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the former governess and independent woman with whom he falls in love. The novel builds on Fowles' authority in Victorian literature, both following and critiquing many of the conventions of period novels.
James Arnold Horowitz, better known as James Salter, his pen name and later-adopted legal name, was an American novelist and short-story writer. Originally a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, he resigned from the military in 1957 following the successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters.
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020.
Alison Stewart Lurie was an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she wrote many non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.
David Stephen Mitchell is an English novelist, television writer, and screenwriter.
The White Hotel is a novel written by the British (Cornish) poet, translator and novelist D. M. Thomas. It was first published in January 1981 by Gollancz in the United Kingdom and in March 1981 by The Viking Press in the United States.
Rachel Cusk is a British novelist and writer.
Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics. A similar term is sapphic literature, encompassing works that feature love between women that are not necessarily lesbian.
Louis Begley is a Polish-American novelist. He is best known for writing the semi-autobiographical Holocaust novel Wartime Lies (1991) and the Schmidt trilogy: About Schmidt (1996), Schmidt Delivered (2000) and Schmidt Steps Back (2012).
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov that addresses the controversial subject of hebephilia. The protagonist is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He describes his obsession with a 12-year-old "nymphet", Dolores Haze, whom he kidnaps and sexually abuses after becoming her stepfather. Privately, he calls her "Lolita", the Spanish nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English, but fear of censorship in the U.S. and Britain led to it being first published in Paris, France, in 1955 by Olympia Press.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a novel by the French novelist and philosophy teacher Muriel Barbery. The book follows events in the life of a concierge, Renée Michel, whose deliberately concealed intelligence is uncovered by an unstable but intellectually precocious girl named Paloma Josse. Paloma is the daughter of an upper-class family living in the Parisian hôtel particulier where Renée works.
Adam C. Begley is an American biographer. He was the books editor for The New York Observer from 1996 to 2009.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2015.
The Virgins is the second novel by American author Pamela Erens, published in 2013 by Tin House Books. It received accolades from many sources including The New York Times, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Publishers Weekly named it one of the best boarding school books of all time.
Yevdokiya Nagrodskaya, was a Russian novelist in fin-de-siècle Russia whose first novel was titled The Wrath of Dionysus. Her debut novel was published in 1910 and explored the theme of her perception of "sexual identity and gender roles" of men and women in Russia. It was very popular in pre-revolutionary Russia among the middle-class people and was controversial. The novel was so popular that it was reprinted 10 times and translated into French, Italian and German. It was also made into a silent movie with erotic content.
Memories of the Future is a 2019 novel by American writer Siri Hustvedt. The novel concerns a narrator, known as S.H. or by her nickname, "Minnesota", who discovers her journal from 40-years prior to the novel's events.
Tess Gunty is an American novelist. Her debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, won the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction.
 | This article about a historical novel of the 1960s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
 | This article about an erotic novel of the 1960s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
