Status
Available
Collection
Physical description
320 p.; 8 inches
Genres
Publication
Vintage (1995), Edition: Reissue, 320 pages
Description
This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair. Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness--and then felt compelled to destroy it.
User reviews
LibraryThing member TimBazzett
I love James Salter books. Every one of them is an absolute treasure. Recently I read his newest novel, ALL THAT IS, and it simply floored me. Enough so that I needed to read more. So I picked up his previous novel, LIGHT YEARS, first published in 1975. That's a pretty long interval between novels,
YEARS: "Extraordinary ... exultant, unabashedly sexual, sensual, and profoundly sad ... a masterpiece."
All of which definitely says it better than my homely "holy crap" homage I normally bestow on such books. So I'm just gonna give you a few examples here of the way Salter writes as he tells the story of a marriage and a family - affluent New York architect Viri Berland, his wife Nedra, and their two daughters. Salter artfully traces the arc of their lives from the late 50s into the early 70s. Maybe I should say the "rise and fall" of a marriage and a life that just seems too perfect to be true - or to last.
On children - "Children are our crop, our fields, our earth. They are birds let loose into darkness. They are errors renewed. Still, they are the only source from which may be drawn a life more successful, more knowing than our own. Somehow they will do one thing, take one step further, they will see the summit."
On death (Nedra sitting with her father dying of cancer in hospital) - "By morning her father had gone into a coma. He lay helpless, breathing more evenly, more slowly ... She called to him: nothing. He had said his last words. Suddenly she was choked with sadness. Oh, peace to you, Papa, she thought ... It took a long time; it took forever; days and nights, the smell of antiseptic, the hush of rubber wheels. This frail engine, we think, and yet what murder is needed to take it down."
On that sexuality and sensuality mentioned (both Viri and Nedra engage in extended extramarital affairs) - "They had begun the unending journey, forward a bit, then back ... he was seizing her arms, her shoulders. She was moaning. She had forgotten him, her body was writhing, clenching like a fist."
A winter morning at the Berlands' country house - "Winter comes. A bitter cold. The snow creaks underfoot with a rich mournful sound. The house is surrounded by white. Hours of sleep, the air chill. The most delicious sleep, is death so warm, so easeful?"
I have never been much of a reader of poetry. Its difficulty and so-called "hidden meanings" often put me off. But Salter's prose reads like poetry, language which illuminates rather than obscures. It is a language that makes you wish you could lie down in it and luxuriate in its richness. I often found myself reading lines aloud to myself, turning the words over and over in my mind. It's just so beautiful.
You can tell, of course, how much Salter values books, another strong connection for me. Here's an example - "The book was in her lap ... The power to change one's life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives would be without the illumination of the lives of others?"
Or, in another passage, where the Berlands' daughter thinks of her childhood home - "... she longed to go back as one longs to hold a certain book again though knowing every phrase, as one longs for music or friends."
LIGHT YEARS is rich with living, with language, with life. Yes, "a masterpiece." I'll say it again: I love James Salter books. My highest recommendation.
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but my God, this guy is good. If anything, I found LIGHT YEARS to be even a bit better than his new one. He probably wouldn't want to hear that, but hell, the fact of the matter is I have never read a bad book by Salter. There just aren't enough superlatives to describe them. One early review from The Philadelphia Inquirer called LIGHTYEARS: "Extraordinary ... exultant, unabashedly sexual, sensual, and profoundly sad ... a masterpiece."
All of which definitely says it better than my homely "holy crap" homage I normally bestow on such books. So I'm just gonna give you a few examples here of the way Salter writes as he tells the story of a marriage and a family - affluent New York architect Viri Berland, his wife Nedra, and their two daughters. Salter artfully traces the arc of their lives from the late 50s into the early 70s. Maybe I should say the "rise and fall" of a marriage and a life that just seems too perfect to be true - or to last.
On children - "Children are our crop, our fields, our earth. They are birds let loose into darkness. They are errors renewed. Still, they are the only source from which may be drawn a life more successful, more knowing than our own. Somehow they will do one thing, take one step further, they will see the summit."
On death (Nedra sitting with her father dying of cancer in hospital) - "By morning her father had gone into a coma. He lay helpless, breathing more evenly, more slowly ... She called to him: nothing. He had said his last words. Suddenly she was choked with sadness. Oh, peace to you, Papa, she thought ... It took a long time; it took forever; days and nights, the smell of antiseptic, the hush of rubber wheels. This frail engine, we think, and yet what murder is needed to take it down."
On that sexuality and sensuality mentioned (both Viri and Nedra engage in extended extramarital affairs) - "They had begun the unending journey, forward a bit, then back ... he was seizing her arms, her shoulders. She was moaning. She had forgotten him, her body was writhing, clenching like a fist."
A winter morning at the Berlands' country house - "Winter comes. A bitter cold. The snow creaks underfoot with a rich mournful sound. The house is surrounded by white. Hours of sleep, the air chill. The most delicious sleep, is death so warm, so easeful?"
I have never been much of a reader of poetry. Its difficulty and so-called "hidden meanings" often put me off. But Salter's prose reads like poetry, language which illuminates rather than obscures. It is a language that makes you wish you could lie down in it and luxuriate in its richness. I often found myself reading lines aloud to myself, turning the words over and over in my mind. It's just so beautiful.
You can tell, of course, how much Salter values books, another strong connection for me. Here's an example - "The book was in her lap ... The power to change one's life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives would be without the illumination of the lives of others?"
Or, in another passage, where the Berlands' daughter thinks of her childhood home - "... she longed to go back as one longs to hold a certain book again though knowing every phrase, as one longs for music or friends."
LIGHT YEARS is rich with living, with language, with life. Yes, "a masterpiece." I'll say it again: I love James Salter books. My highest recommendation.
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LibraryThing member Schmerguls
This is a 1975 novel telling of Viri and Nedra, a couple who live in the country outside New York City, and have two daughters, Frasca and Danny. Viri and Nedra are both adulterers and eventually divorce. Viri goes to Rome and marries a 33-year-old when he is 47. We learn about their friends ,
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their children fornicating, etc., all told in limpid and evocative prose. There is no real plot, just a telling of events in their changing lives. Viri would have stayed married to Nedra but she insisted on divorce. Viri would have gone back to Nedra, even after he married in Rome, but Nedra was not open to such. I found the book mostly sad, and there was utterly no envy in my heart for the things that attracted either Viri or Nedra in their lives of fleeting joys and overwhelming sadnesses. Desptie that, I could not fail to be moved by the word picture so expertly painted by Salter. I have to say the words said of Salter by Richard Ford: "It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anyone writing today " strike me as insightful. Show Less
LibraryThing member buzzharper
Great book. I know how Viri felt after the divorce and his wife moved out. Must be Salter's greatest work.
LibraryThing member nolanotes
I loved this book. Salter has a wonderful economy of words. For such a short piece, it carried a big punch.
LibraryThing member Linus_Linus
Rereading, actually. Just to place Salter correctly in the hierarchy of american prose. Between Bellow and Mailer?
LibraryThing member BillBoden
My first introduction to this unregarded American master. His time will come!
LibraryThing member davebessom
Beautiful. Salter's prose flows like poetry. A really moving inspection of a failing relationship.
LibraryThing member conniekronlokken
I love James Salter, and think this is one of his best novels. The character Nedra is drawn beautifully. It is also a look back at a life made by two people, Viri and Nedra, for their daughters. They eventually leave this life, but while they were in it, it was beautiful. Salter gives us a full
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picture of Nedra, always luminous. Show Less
LibraryThing member Jan7Smith
A beautifully written book, one of my all time favorites. I read it twice and will read it again I am sure.
LibraryThing member stef7sa
A unique novel in a style unlike any other I have read. A prose poem really, very evocative . Moving at times, annoying at others. Magnificent sentences but characters that are kept at a distance unfortunately.
LibraryThing member jostie13
I didn't want it to end.
LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
There are the books that remain relevant and speak to readers decades, or even centuries after they were first published. There are books that sink quietly into obscurity a few years after they first appeared, and then there is this book. First published in 1975, it was recently reissued and I ran
He was a Jew, the most elegant Jew, the most romantic, a hint of weariness in his features, the intelligent features everyone envied, his hair dry, his clothes oddly threadbare--that is to say, not overly cared for, a button missing, the edge of a cuff stained, his breath faintly bad like the breath of an uncle who is no longer well. He was small. He had soft hands, and no sense of money, almost none at all. He was an albino in that, a freak. A Jew without money is like a dog without teeth.
I'm fully in favor of judging a work by the standards of its time, and will give a lot of leeway to the novels of bygone times, but yikes. There's a lot to critique about modern society but the way non-white people and women were talked about in this book was jarring. There's a repeated theme that the best thing for girls (and the girls in question are still in high school) is to be "educated" by an older man, a belief spouted even by the mother of these children. There's also a sexual fascination for a girl beginning puberty and a related distaste for aging women. Because this is a book formed mainly of conversations at dinner parties and of various characters talking about their ideas, certain beliefs that tend not to be spoken of in public today are discussed in detail and brought up more than once.
"You've been married." He handed her a glass. "I can see it. Women become dry if they live alone. I don't think it needs explaining. It's demonstrable. Even if it's not a good marriage, it keeps them from dehydrating."
There's good things in this book. There's good descriptions of what a good dinner party looked like for bohemian intellectuals, and descriptions of a very nice farmhouse. The bit set in Rome was interesting, although the plot-line of the old guy getting worshipped by a much younger and beautiful Italian woman were perhaps unlikely. Of course, the man described as having "the face of ancient politicians, of pensioners, the wrinkles looked black as ink" is forty-seven.
Anyway, Light Years is considered a "modern classic" and greater minds than my own think it's important as more than as an odd artifact of history.
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into in an article, described as an example of very fine writing and a beautiful portrayal of a dying marriage. Reader, it is neither of those things. The writing is less fine than flowery, which is nice in small doses and less so when it serves to grind the story to halt. And the story begins after the relationship between Viri and Nedra had become one of co-parents and co-hosts only. The book instead details their lives from when their children are small and they are going through the motions, united only in their love of their children, in entertaining and in love for the very nice farmhouse they own near enough to Manhattan as make frequent short trips into town easy. I'm a little envious of the lifestyle they enjoyed on the salary of a single unsuccessful architect, with long trips to Europe and expensive wines routine, but the book is set sometime in the early sixties, when I guess no one worried about money. That it stays in that same time frame despite spanning decades in the lives of Viri and Nedra is something to just not worry about. He was a Jew, the most elegant Jew, the most romantic, a hint of weariness in his features, the intelligent features everyone envied, his hair dry, his clothes oddly threadbare--that is to say, not overly cared for, a button missing, the edge of a cuff stained, his breath faintly bad like the breath of an uncle who is no longer well. He was small. He had soft hands, and no sense of money, almost none at all. He was an albino in that, a freak. A Jew without money is like a dog without teeth.
I'm fully in favor of judging a work by the standards of its time, and will give a lot of leeway to the novels of bygone times, but yikes. There's a lot to critique about modern society but the way non-white people and women were talked about in this book was jarring. There's a repeated theme that the best thing for girls (and the girls in question are still in high school) is to be "educated" by an older man, a belief spouted even by the mother of these children. There's also a sexual fascination for a girl beginning puberty and a related distaste for aging women. Because this is a book formed mainly of conversations at dinner parties and of various characters talking about their ideas, certain beliefs that tend not to be spoken of in public today are discussed in detail and brought up more than once.
"You've been married." He handed her a glass. "I can see it. Women become dry if they live alone. I don't think it needs explaining. It's demonstrable. Even if it's not a good marriage, it keeps them from dehydrating."
There's good things in this book. There's good descriptions of what a good dinner party looked like for bohemian intellectuals, and descriptions of a very nice farmhouse. The bit set in Rome was interesting, although the plot-line of the old guy getting worshipped by a much younger and beautiful Italian woman were perhaps unlikely. Of course, the man described as having "the face of ancient politicians, of pensioners, the wrinkles looked black as ink" is forty-seven.
Anyway, Light Years is considered a "modern classic" and greater minds than my own think it's important as more than as an odd artifact of history.
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LibraryThing member breathslow
I'm not really sure how I feel about this one. A marriage dissolving slowly in upstate New York, with occasional excursions for self-discovery, romance or Bohemian social life in New York City and some sophisticated European watering holes. Gentle musings on the inevitable decay and death of
If so, I was grateful for his frequent insertion of languorous descriptions of the food in the rooms through which these lives ebbed: they were generally more enticing than the characters.
"In the early afternoon they had chocolate and pears . . . Lunches on a blued checked cloth on which salt has spilled. The smell of tobacco. Brie, yellow apples, wood-handled knives . . . The dishes were set on the table and uncovered: shrimp and peas, braised chicken, rice . . . A cake with orange icing . . . something light: a boiled potato, cold meat, the remains of a bottle of wine . . . Beneath a wide umbrella Nedra spread chicken, eggs, endive, tomatoes, paté, cheese, bread, cucumbers, butter and wine . . . the peel of lemon beside the empty cups . . . They were having Meusault, fromages, pastries from Leonard's . . . The table was laid in the kitchen: Kulich, a sweet, Russian cake, chunks of feta, dark bread and butter, fruit . . . The dinner, she announced when they were seated at the table, was Italian. Petti di pollo . . . They ate like a family, noisy, devoted, they passed plates freely . . .
Salter himself suggests at one point, "Life is meals." In the end, I cared less about Nedra and Viri, his slowly deliquescing couple, and more about how I could enjoy their "pleasures of the table".
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ourselves and everything we love. While Salter's writing is superb in many ways, the novel dwells in an aimless and tepid ennui throughout. Perhaps that's his point: that's life? If so, I was grateful for his frequent insertion of languorous descriptions of the food in the rooms through which these lives ebbed: they were generally more enticing than the characters.
"In the early afternoon they had chocolate and pears . . . Lunches on a blued checked cloth on which salt has spilled. The smell of tobacco. Brie, yellow apples, wood-handled knives . . . The dishes were set on the table and uncovered: shrimp and peas, braised chicken, rice . . . A cake with orange icing . . . something light: a boiled potato, cold meat, the remains of a bottle of wine . . . Beneath a wide umbrella Nedra spread chicken, eggs, endive, tomatoes, paté, cheese, bread, cucumbers, butter and wine . . . the peel of lemon beside the empty cups . . . They were having Meusault, fromages, pastries from Leonard's . . . The table was laid in the kitchen: Kulich, a sweet, Russian cake, chunks of feta, dark bread and butter, fruit . . . The dinner, she announced when they were seated at the table, was Italian. Petti di pollo . . . They ate like a family, noisy, devoted, they passed plates freely . . .
Salter himself suggests at one point, "Life is meals." In the end, I cared less about Nedra and Viri, his slowly deliquescing couple, and more about how I could enjoy their "pleasures of the table".
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Subjects
Awards
Original language
English
Original publication date
1975
ISBN
9780679740735