John Freeman

One of the great falsities of "travel literature" is the idea that we lurch into strange lands, eyes turned mostly outward. The truth is quite the opposite: Staring out at passing landscapes often turns us inward, as do the static hours spent waiting for connecting flights or buses.

James Salter seems to understand this, and in "There & Then," a collection of his occasional travel writing, the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of "Dusk and Other Stories" spends most of his time attending to shades of light and mood. Here are a visit to the Hamptons, skiing in the Alps and a biking trip across Japan as experienced by a literary impressionist. As a result of Salter's light touch, some of these pieces read like prose poems. He recalls the turn of seasons in Colorado, the swirl of life in postwar Paris. His essays on France are the only sour notes in the book, their snobbery curdling to something slightly acidic.

The best pieces here make Salter's memories feel like our own. "A long hot bath, half a bottle of wine and a chicken pie at the pub just down the road seemed as great a luxury as I can remember," he writes in a piece about walking across England, "and I fell into bed with the rain pouring down."

(2006-03-07)

Also by John Freeman

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Rebecca Brown is one of the best-kept secrets of short fiction
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Elementary Justice
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Tip of the Week
Memoirists have taken a beating in the past two weeks, but it is unlikely Jonathan Ames will have to field any of these punches
(2006-01-31)

Nonfiction Review
"If we know anything about man," writes Larry McMurtry in this grim but stirring little book, "it's that he's not pacific"
(2006-01-10)

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Poetry Review
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Nonfiction Review
(2005-10-18)

Fiction Review
(2005-10-11)

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Rush Hour
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Nonfiction Review
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