James Salter’s 1967 masterpiece A Sport and a Pastime might just be the quintessential underappreciated novel: it received critical acclaim when it was first released from the few critics who bothered to review it, barely sold any copies, and slowly became a cult novel among writers and avid literary readers.

Salter, who became a cult writer later in life largely through this novel, said it was the only one of his books that came close to living up to his standards. When you keep in mind that he won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Dusk and Other Stories and had both Solo Faces and Light Years included in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, the central place of A Sport and a Pastime in Salter’s oeuvre comes into focus.

Luminous Style

Salter writes in an elegant and concise prose style that flows through the book in the way that time flows through a life. Each sentence aspires to the sublime, there are no throwaway lines. As great books must, A Sport and a Pastime opens with an unforgettable passage: “September. It seems these luminous days will never end. The city, which was almost empty during August, now is filling up again. It is being replenished.”

This eternal style would make the familiar plot almost beside the point – if not for its intriguing structure. The subject of the book is an ephemeral love affair between an American boy of 20 and an 18-year old French girl. The narrator is an acquaintance of the couple who freely admits he’s fabricating most of the scenes.

Why Always Love Stories?

His jealously of the boy is palpable through the detailed sex scenes that fill the majority of the book. This makes A Sport and a Pastime a sort of meta love story without the irritating contrivances found in postmodern literature. If the book asks a question of its reader, it would be “Why are people compelled to tell love stories?”

This brief book leaves the question for the reader to answer, the narrator never really provides his reasons. Instead, the book comes to a shattering end that feels inevitable — beautiful, ephemeral love affairs (at least in fiction) can never have a happy ending. Read it in an afternoon, and you’ll be crying over your dinner.

The Second Order Of Greatness

While A Sport and a Pastime is a masterpiece, it doesn’t quite reach the very highest level of greatness. This partially explains why it sells at roughly 3% of the rate of 1967’s most popular and influential literary novel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years Of Solitude. But is A Sport and a Pastime really 1/33rd the novel?

Everyone will tell you to read Marquez’s book, and they’re certainly right. However, those few that would recommend A Sport and a Pastime are opening the door to a reading experience that many will find no less moving than 100 Years Of Solitude. While Salter’s book might not be one of the iconic works of a major literary movement, it is one of the all-time great erotic novels.

When every sentence reaches for the sublime, it’s inevitable that (even in a masterpiece) a small percentage will miss and fall into pretentiousness and contrivance. E.g. “One is an angel, at least for betrayal.” A fresh bit of figurative language (which is the substance of Salter’s prose) resonates with the reader when it hits, and rings hollow when it doesn’t.

That these hollow rings disrupted the beautiful melody of Salter’s work was the primary criticism throughout his career, and it’s one of the few legitimate gripes a discerning reader can have about his oeuvre. In A Sport and a Pastime, however, these missed notes are lost in a sublime symphony.

Final Thoughts

If you’re tired of dry, ideologically-driven fiction and want to read a beautifully sensual book, you’d struggle to do better than A Sport and a Pastime. If you like it, check out other Salter works mentioned above. At least one more will likely be discussed in this series, possibly very soon.

The past two essays in this series concerned the identification of potentially underrated books. This essay, the final piece in the prologue of this series, concerns the most important yet most subjective part of this process — analyzing potentially underrated books to determine their true status.

While this process is inherently subjective to a large extent, I’ve put together a structure that I’ll follow when analyzing each book. This should limit my personal biases against certain genres or authors and give each book a fair chance.

Without some sort of structure, my reviews would be colored by what sort of mood I was in when reading the book, or perhaps my opinion of the author’s personal beliefs. Neither of these factors has anything to do with the book’s artistic merit.

Nor does (despite the prevailing atmosphere in the literary world) an author’s race, gender, sexual orientation, hair color, ice cream preference, or any other irrelevant personal characteristics.

Not even the author’s previous work or social context matters when analyzing one of their works — all that matters is what’s on the pages. Each work of literature, while being read, is a universe unto itself. How could anything not in this universe matter to the truly engrossed reader?

And this series is for readers. Unlike academic literary criticism written for academics, this series is very much popular literary criticism written for readers who are hungry to experience beautiful works of literature.

The Method

Close Reading

First and foremost, as you likely already figured out, my approach to literary criticism is based on close reading. Close reading requires approaching each book with a clear mind, focusing intently when reading, and submitting entirely to the authorial vision. Only then will the true depth (or lack thereof) of the work be revealed.

Logical Originality

As a fiction writer, I see no point in creating something unless it’s original in some way. Unfortunately, many writers now and throughout history seem not to share this conviction.

One of the first things you’ll learn in a creative writing class is not to use cliches. However, many writers have a rather narrow definition of what constitutes a cliche. To them, cliches are metaphors and similes that have been overused to the extent that they’re essentially meaningless.

But plot, characters, style, and themes can all be cliched. Whenever I come across a book that’s wholly original in all of the above, there’s a good chance I’m reading a very good, if not great, work.

That is, if there’s some sort of logical structure that allows the reader to understand the work. Some writers seem to expect readers to acclaim them as geniuses purely because they couldn’t make heads or tails of an unnecessarily difficult book.

Walking A Well-Lit Path

While my approach to literary criticism isn’t directly copied from another writer, I don’t claim to have created a totally new way to read books. My approach to reading books with a critical eye is inspired by the work of Frye and Bloom most of all.

My approach to writing the reviews themselves will also be based on the approach taken by an influential writer, though one far better known for his fiction.

John Updike was also a prolific and highly regarded literary critic. In his non-fiction collection Picked-Up Pieces, he laid out 5 excellent rules for reviewers to follow when writing about books:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

As far as I’m concerned, every book reviewer should print these rules out and tack them to the wall above their writing desk.

Final Thoughts

Next week’s essay will cover the first underappreciated book in the series. After that piece, the series will be a bit more sporadic, though I’ll try to cover at least one underappreciated book per month. In between installments of this series, I’ll publish weekly essays covering anything and everything related to writers, writing, and writings.

Misquotes are usually treated as nothing more than careless errors. In a journalistic context, where the truth is supposed to be end-all and be-all, this holds true. In every other context, however, I think misquotes, while inaccurate, can offer an interesting window into the mind of the misquoter.

A misquote happens when the communicator isn’t completely certain about the exact wording of the quote they have in mind, so they take their best guess. Their best guess is first and foremost based on their perception of the original speaker, as the misquoter is trying to figure out what he original speaker most likely would have said. The interesting part of this isn’t the guesswork, it’s the subjective perception the misquoter has of the original speaker, their image of the original speaker through the lens behind their eyes where they view the world.

Perhaps more interesting still is the second part of the process that produces a misquote. This involves the misquoter checking the first version of their educated guess against their perception of the quote itself.

Does this sound right?

While the first version of the misquote may be colored by a personal affinity or dislike for the speaker that isn’t particularly interesting to anyone other than the misquoter, the second version, the version the misquoter releases into the world, is colored by their perception of the message itself. This is what allows the third party, the receiver of the misquote, the opportunity to connect with the misquoter.

So that’s how they see the world… hey, that feels familiar.

DFW Misquotes Wittgenstein

For the type specimen, let’s look at David Foster Wallace’s misquote of one of Wittgenstein’s most famous assertions. In an interview with German TV, DFW was asked if humor could only come out of something sad.

When asked about “big issues” like this, it seems that novelists are expected to come up with an answer more insightful than the average halfway intelligent person could spit out on the spot.

DFW, clearly uncomfortable, eventually said “I know that Wittgenstein believed that the most serious and profound problems and questions and issues could only be discussed in the form of jokes.”

At face value, this does seem to be the sort of insightful and referential answer novelists are expected to come up with. There’s only one problem – this is very different from the quote DFW was trying to recite.

Wittgenstein’s Words

It’s worth noting that the exact quote DFW was thinking of was not a direct quote of Wittgenstein at all — it was Norman Malcom, one of the philosopher’s biographers, paraphrasing something Wittgenstein had once said off-the-cuff in a lecture. The exact quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir is: “It is worth noting that Wittgenstein once said that a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without begin [sic] facetious).”

As a paraphrase, this line is intended to communicate a Wittgensteinian concept rather than pass on the great philosopher’s words verbatim. As with a misquote, a paraphrase, though intentional, is intended to accurately translate a tricky concept into an easier-to-understand format.

Perhaps Malcolm’s paraphrase was inaccurate itself. But what really matters is not what Wittgenstein actually said, or even whether Wittgenstein himself said it. The concept, the idea of a meaningful exploration of the human experience told entirely in the form of jokes, had passed into cultural discourse. It became one of Wittgenstein’s most famous quotes (even if it was only his concept) after Malcolm’s book was published.

A Peephole Into DFW’s Mind

DFW’s quote is just that — his own words, spoken as a quote of a great mind perhaps as a gesture of humility or to validate his own concept. His concept: The most serious issues (rather than a philosophical work) can only be (rather than could be) discussed (rather than written) in the form of jokes.

If you’ve read Infinite Jest, this concept will feel familiar. After all, the book endlessly discusses serious issues in the form of jokes. Furthermore, the narrative voice does seem to invite the reader into a discourse of these serious ideas, presented in a humorous way.

A Quote That Stands On Its Own Merit

So DFW badly misquoted a paraphrase of Wittgenstein that, for all we know, was misremembered by Norman Malcolm. But who gives a fuck?

The most profound issues can only be discussed in the form of jokes. That’s a concept worth chewing on, no matter how it came to be.

I’m not sure I completely buy this, but I think there’s some truth to it. My misquote might go something like this: “The most important problems of the human experience can best be discussed in the form of jokes.” You can quote (or misquote) me on that.

Final Thoughts

The “Underappreciated Books” series will resume next week with a presentation of my approach to literary criticism. I’ll try to make it a little less dry and self-absorbed than it sounds. See you then.