A SPORT AND A PASTIME
The Book Club Archive
Discussing A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter felt like sinking into a dream—lush, fleeting, and tinged with an ache you can’t quite name. This is a novel that reads like sunlight on water: luminous and hypnotic but always just out of reach. In Salter’s world, every moment shimmers with eroticism, beauty, and a sense of inevitability, yet it’s all undercut by the quiet knowledge that nothing, no matter how exquisite, can last.
The story is simple in its premise but profound in its implications: an unnamed narrator recounts the brief, intoxicating affair between Philip Dean, a young American man, and Anne-Marie, a French shopgirl, as they drift through provincial France in the 1960s. Yet the novel is as much about what is seen as what isn’t, about the spaces between memory, imagination, and truth. Salter’s prose, so rich and evocative, invites us into a world that feels almost unbearably intimate, even as it remains slippery, opaque.
What We Discussed
We began by marveling at Salter’s prose, which one member described as “a kind of literary impressionism.” His sentences are like brushstrokes, capturing the ephemeral beauty of a moment while leaving much unsaid. The group agreed that the novel’s power lies in this balance—its ability to evoke desire, longing, and the fragility of human connection without ever spelling them out. Salter’s language seduces, but it also unsettles; every detail feels freighted with significance, every silence pregnant with what remains unsaid.
The narrator, with his voyeuristic and unreliable voice, became a central point of discussion. His recounting of Philip and Anne-Marie’s affair is lushly detailed and unflinchingly intimate, yet we’re constantly reminded that it is, at least in part, a construct. Is he an observer or a fabricator? A friend of Philip’s or someone who longs to be him? This ambiguity led us to consider the novel as a meditation on storytelling itself—on the ways we shape and distort reality to suit our own desires, on the slipperiness of memory and the allure of invention.
We delved deeply into the relationship between Philip and Anne-Marie, which is at once intoxicating and deeply imbalanced. Philip, with his privileged American nonchalance, moves through France and through Anne-Marie’s life with an ease that borders on carelessness. Anne-Marie, by contrast, is rooted in the physical and emotional reality of their affair, her desire raw and unguarded. We talked about how Salter captures the electric charge of their connection but also the subtle power dynamics at play—how Philip’s detachment and Anne-Marie’s vulnerability mirror larger cultural and gendered divides.
The setting, too, played a significant role in our conversation. Salter’s France is not the romanticized postcard version but a sensual, almost tactile landscape of dusty roads, small-town hotels, and quiet rivers. The group discussed how this setting shapes the novel’s mood—how the languid, sun-drenched afternoons and shadowy nights create a world that feels suspended in time, both intimate and isolating. France, in Salter’s hands, is as much a character as Philip or Anne-Marie, a place that reflects their longing and their impermanence.
Critical Commentary
What makes A Sport and a Pastime so extraordinary is its refusal to adhere to conventional storytelling. The novel is not concerned with plot or resolution but with atmosphere, mood, and the ephemeral nature of experience. Salter’s prose demands that we linger, that we pay attention to the texture of a moment—the slant of light through a window, the sound of a car engine at dusk. This is a novel that luxuriates in the details, that insists on the beauty and fragility of the everyday.
The group also reflected on the novel’s treatment of intimacy. Salter writes about sex with a frankness and lyricism that is almost unparalleled, yet he avoids sentimentality. The scenes between Philip and Anne-Marie are deeply sensual but also clinical in their precision, stripped of any romantic pretense. We debated whether this detachment was liberating or alienating—whether Salter’s refusal to sentimentalize intimacy made it more honest or less human.
Finally, we considered the novel’s darker undercurrents—its themes of power, privilege, and disconnection. Philip’s ease, his ability to drift through life without consequence, feels deeply tied to his identity as an American man in postwar Europe. Anne-Marie, by contrast, bears the weight of their affair, her vulnerability underscoring the imbalance between them. Salter never overtly critiques this dynamic, but his careful rendering of it invites us to question the structures that make such imbalances possible.
Why It Matters
A Sport and a Pastime is a novel that seduces and disorients in equal measure. It captures the fleeting nature of desire and the impossibility of fully knowing another person, even as it revels in the act of trying. In our discussion, we returned again and again to the idea of impermanence—how Salter’s world is one of constant motion, where beauty is always on the verge of disappearing. This is not a novel that seeks to explain or resolve; it is a novel that asks us to look, to feel, to linger in the spaces between certainty and ambiguity.
This is what makes the book so enduring: its ability to capture the essence of experience without reducing it to a single meaning. It’s a story about love and lust, about memory and imagination, about the ways we construct and deconstruct ourselves through our relationships with others. And in its refusal to offer easy answers, it becomes a book that you carry with you, that changes as you change, that feels different each time you return to it.
If you’ve ever felt the ache of something slipping through your fingers—whether a moment, a relationship, or a version of yourself—then A Sport and a Pastime will resonate with you in ways that are difficult to articulate but impossible to forget. And if you’re looking for a space where literature is treated not as a pastime but as a portal, a way of understanding the world and our place in it, then this book club is where you’ll find it.
