After surviving World War II, Philip Bowman manages to talk himself into Harvard University and then stumbles into publishing at a time when that profession still offered some elegance and cachet.
If only his love life were as easy to manage in All That Is, James Salter's first work of fiction since 2005's “Last Night.”
Now 87, the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of “A Sport and a Pastime” and “Light Years” remains a writer of tremendous ability. The opening chapter, set off Okinawa during the last days of World War II, is an absolute stunner.
Unfortunately, then peace arrives and Bowman, who was raised in Summit, N.J., by a single mom, isn't sure what to make of his life.
A small, high-end literary house takes him on as editor and Bowman finds the four-day weeks in summer and twice-yearly trips to Europe a salubrious means of earning his daily bread.
In the meantime, Bowman spends the next four decades falling in and out of love with a series of women as Salter expertly chronicles the giddy beginnings and sour endings (with a surprising amount of pretty graphic sex along the way).
Take the day Bowman meets his wife, Vivian, in a bar. “He was so struck by her face that it was difficult to look at her, she stood out so.”
So what if she'd rather ride than read? “He loved her for not only what she was but what she might be, the idea that she might be otherwise did not occur to him or did not matter.” (Ladies, if someone says he loves you for who you could be, run.)
Bowman wants books, culture, and the city; Vivian horses, money, and the country. The marriage founders. Of course, he was also having an intense affair with a married Englishwoman, but never mind that. Later, Bowman gets betrayed by one lover and then exacts a fairly nasty revenge on an innocent party.
“All That Is” is episodic in nature, with Salter interspersing Bowman's blinkered existence with brief portraits of characters who then vanish from the novel. As a counterpoint, he offers the love story of Bowman's fellow editor, Neil Eddins, for whom constancy comes naturally, but that doesn't lead to happiness, either.
It must be said that “All That Is” turns on a certain amount of male wish-fulfillment. In this novel, for instance, the teenage girls are just dying to fall into bed with men in their 50s and 60s. Sorry, guys. That's why they call it fiction.
