A chat with James Salter
James Salter turned 90 just days before he died on June 19.
Despite his age, his death came as a great surprise to many. When Melbourne writers and reviewers Kevin Rabalais and Jennifer Levasseur heard the news, they were working on the proof pages of their Conversations with James Salter for the University Press of Mississippi. It is a collection of interviews with Salter dating back to 1972, and includes some of the many he did after the publication in 2013 of All That Is, his first novel for 34 years. Rabalais said he had been in contact with Salter around the time of his birthday, and Salter had told him that he would like to have stayed in his 80s a bit longer. Rabalais met Salter at Tulane University in New Orleans when Rabalais was teaching there and Salter was writer-in-residence. Rabalais later visited his home in Bridgehampton and interviewed him for The Age on the day that All That Is was published in the US (an interview that will feature in Conversations). Rabalais said Salter was "very generous" in his responses but he could, if inclined, "shut you down with a one-word answer if he didn't like the question – it was, perhaps, a reminder of his military past". Rabalais said Salter had only recently signed with Knopf for a memoir about his writing life but may have been working on it for a couple of years. "I always hope there's going to be more Salter." Conversations is due out in November but the publication date could well be brought forward. Rabalais said Salter had always been described as a writer's writer. "But he was really a readers' reader – he was in love with literature."
Buffalo hunting in the US
Tanya Landman's novel Buffalo Soldier is about a young black girl who conceals her sex and joins the army not long after the end of the American civil war. It has had enthusiastic reviews and last week won Britain's Carnegie Medal, one of the oldest prizes for children's writing. But apparently publishers in the US are reluctant to buy territorial rights to the young-adult novel because it is not written by an American. Perhaps it also had something to do with the publication of Laird Hunt's much praised Neverhome, about a farmer's wife who joins the Union army during the civil war.
Pearson bags No 1 spot
The British company Pearson is the largest publisher in the world, according to the Livres Hebdo/ Publishers Weekly global rankings for this year, with revenue of more than $US7 billion ($9.1 billion), down almost 10 per cent on the previous year. The biggest trade publisher is Penguin Random House, which saw revenue jump by about 25 per cent in 2014 compared with the previous year, thanks to the merger of the two companies. Publishers Weekly says the biggest change is the emergence of two Chinese publishers in the top 10.
