By Zack Gill
Copy Editor
In James Salter’s first novel in 30 years, “All That Is,” he describes the primary backdrop of post-war New York City as “a tremendous opera with an infinite cast and tumultuous as well as solitary scenes.”
Salter might as well be describing his own novel; “All That Is” is at once the portrayal of protagonist Philip Bowman’s trials and tribulations in both the publishing industry and in love, in addition to a sprawling chronicle of a post-World War II era, with countless asides on the exploits of various characters on Bowman’s periphery. Despite Salter’s iridescent prose, “All That Is” flounders from a lack of focus (its attempt to encapsulate “all that is”) and an elusive, bland protagonist.
“All That Is” opens, quite literally, explosively, as kamikaze pilots barrage the Navy ship upon which young Bowman is stationed. Bowman comes home from the war with his life transformed. Afterward, he attends Harvard with literary aspirations and eventually ends up working as an editor of fiction in a small literary press in New York City.
Bowman’s story is simply not as interesting as the time period that frames it. Salter convincingly builds a post-war America, with the rise of feminism, paranoia and the decline of popular literature. Bowman himself, however, is boring – that this may be the origin of his romantic entropy is inapparent to him. Everything about Bowman is pathetic, from his post-collegiate vanity throughout the courtship of his first wife to his middle-aged, existential crisis-driven tries at being sort of a Casanova.
Throughout the novel, Bowman halfheartedly searches for a grand mansion on the upper west side of New York City that he recalls from childhood, a house owned by distant relatives, according to his mother. The symbol, employed masterfully, perfectly encapsulates Bowman, a man driven by romantic idealism and nostalgia, rather than the notion of living in the present.
The main draw is Salter’s resplendent prose. He vividly conjures simple-yet-lucid turns of phrase throughout “All That Is,” such as in his descriptions of Manhattan as “a long necklace of light” and the “slow, profound rhythm” of a lover’s embrace.
Salter’s sentences are brisk, staccato, even, but also lyrical and hypnotic. Salter’s wisdom shows in the sparseness of his prose: in a little less 300 pages, Salter packs in the rich detail of a novel twice the length. Salter is one of America’s most gifted prose stylists.
“All That Is” is an enigma. If its title suggests a nature that is all-encompassing, perhaps Salter is making a pessimistic, obscure statement about the nature of everything, of the world beyond his pen. But although Bowman ends up with yet another woman, we are once more left with a bland taste. “All That Is” is available at booksellers now.
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