Summer in New York fifteen years ago, maybe more, I fell in love with Eric Rohmer. These things happen. There was a retrospective at Film Forum and for me it was the right time for the right filmmaker. I had seen My Night at Maud’s but wasn’t as familiar with his other work. I left a matinee of La Collectioneuse (pictured above) and suddenly it was all happening. I couldn’t believe the way these people talked, the way they dressed, that they were in this beautiful house. I was back the next day, for Claire’s Knee, the next day for Love in the Afternoon. And back the next week too.
What could be better? Sometimes you try something and you’re not ready then finally one day it makes sense. I tried to read Anthony Powell when I was in my twenties, it wasn’t happening. Then I was spending more time in London and they reissued A Dance to the Music of Time, with their Marc Boxer covers and, again, it was the right book for the right time in my life.
That happens less as I get older. My tastes are more formed. I’m surprised less. But sometimes a writer just speaks to where you are. It doesn’t mean you love everything you do, you just want to know more. Sometimes there are parallels to your life, broadly thematic or quite narrow. I’ve gone back into James Salter’s work and some of it is so good and some is not as good as I remember. I’ve always liked his non-fiction, Burning the Days, of course, but also his travel writing, collected in There and Then.
Somehow I missed his letters (and from) Robert Phelps, and I just read those too, which appear in Memorable Days (not sure Salter would have approved that title). Incredibly he recommends the same Paris hotel (including specific rooms) I’m going to tomorrow—uncanny. I re-read Light Years, and it’s also better and occasionally worse than I remember. (His famous sex scenes are awful.) One character reads a life of Tolstoy, I started that book and I came across Hadji, a military figure, which was the preposterous name of Nedra and Viri’s dog (already the worst names in fiction). There’s no doubt that’s where Salter found that name. Again, I shivered with the connection.
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