All That Is by James Salter

Another book by a man written for men it seems.

All That Is starts near the end of World War II where Philip Bowman is a junior naval officer en route to Japan suffering kamikaze assaults. We follow him as he returns a hero to the United States, enrolls at Harvard University, and becomes a book editor at a New York literary publishing house.

There is no plot per se.

You can describe this as a romance. Carnal, raw, almost a bit too much for delicate sensibilities. At times I felt I was reading a literary Mills & Boon or Harlequin, a “chick lit” really, but only a bit more carnal, a bit raw, matter-of-factly, and very much from a male viewpoint….“her buttocks were glorious, it was like being in a bakery”.

We see Bowman seemingly fall in love with the one, who he marries…and subsequently divorces. First he cheats on her then is angry when she asks for a divorce, on grounds unrelated to his unfaithfulness of which she is not aware. We then watch him have a series of affairs throughout his life, meet, flirt, fuck, repeat, until the end when he’s old enough to contemplate death…and settle down once again, childless, with a woman much much younger. I guess I should be fair and acknowledge that there is love and passion I guess in this strange routine.

Clearly, you know you are reading a book written by an elderly white American man. All That Is is my introduction to the exalted James Salter who wrote this novel in 2013, at the age of 87! He died two years later. For me it’s a whole new world. The world of male white America, mostly East Coast with a sprinkle of Jewish New York. The world of white American men of a certain social strata who love women, books or the arts, dinner parties, alcohol, and Europe. In addition to all of Bowman’s romances, we get a peripheral peek at the love lives of his co-workers and friends as well, with their wives and lovers, as they too plod through their boring ordinary lives. This one was a real adventure…a real dull adventure.

I didn’t care much for the story. If there’s any part of me that resonated with the protagonist it’s his loneliness, not only implied but deeply felt throughout. I just don’t seem to like these male authored books like Memories of My Melancholy Whores and Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood. The embedded misogyny ends up annoying me. I have explored the possibility that men know nothing about writing romances.

That said, I need to state clearly that Mr. Salter is an amazing writer. AMAZING. He has a wonderful way with words, simply taking you from A to B while leaving you with such richness. Beautiful. His way of telling stories lets you know that he is a true master of the art, yet I am not sure I can brave another of his novels.