Meandering “All That Is” Lacks Substantiality to Reinforce Salter’s Pretty Prose

“There comes a time when you

realize that everything is a dream,

and only those things preserved in writing

have any possibility of being real.”

“All That Is” landed on my desk preceded by author James Salter’s reputation for smooth prose. And while that proved to be true, I found my reading of it compromised by the confusion and aloofness that riddled the story itself.

Overall, the book was a bit of a plod, making it a lengthy read. The prose featured long, rhythmic sentences, with Salter taking the time to share in-depth character sketching even on supposedly minor characters with bit roles. There were some harrowing and creepy plotlines, with some incestuous leanings thrown in for bad measure.

As well, there were some confusing pronoun use and context problems, not to mention some unexpected, matter-of-fact vulgarity that can catch the reader off-guard. Some of these passages dwelled so long on the act that they entered into awkward and uncomfortable territory. There were also shifts in perspective that were quite sudden and arresting, picking up various strains of personal stories that go off on seemingly unrelated tangents.

The most problematic difficulty I encountered, however, was the lack of access into Bowman’s mindset. As his life unfolds, there is a pervasive sense that life is just occurring all around him, while we’re given no insight into how he feels or what he desires. This approach is understandable in some ways, yet I feel the story would have felt more personal and genuine with a few of these look-ins.

Bowman seems content to glide through life as a jaded, bit player at a publishing house. He cheats and is cheated on; he lies and is lied to. The book began with some intense battle imagery, but Bowman quickly journeys from war hero to antihero, bottoming out when he gets back at one girlfriend who essentially stole his house from him by smoking hash with and date-raping her 30-years-younger daughter.

This episode points up a running theme from Salter within this book: that women are seen as things to be conquered. While this level of chauvinism may be reflective of the era in which the book is set, it can be problematic when combined by the gulf and distance between the reader and the main character.

“The great hunger of the past was for food, there was never enough food and the majority of people were undernourished or starving, but the new hunger was for sex, there was the same specter of famine without it.”

“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. Why would it occur? When you love you see a future according to your dreams.”

“‘We’re in the middle of the woman thing. They want equality, in work, marriage, everywhere. They don’t want to be desired unless they feel like it ... The thing is, they want a life like ours. We both can’t have a life like ours.’”

“She was lively and wanted to talk, like a wind-up doll, a little doll that also did sex. Kitty was her name.”

Which brings up the question: Are we supposed to like him? He’s some weird combination of Don Draper and Biff Loman, but his likeability is mitigated by lack of explanation, a dearth of details surrounding the whys of his decisions.

You get the sense that the book is ostensibly supposed to be about finding meaning and love, but this theme is diminished by the detachment of Bowman’s feelings. By the time thoughts of mortality begin to enter the equation toward the end of the book, it is almost too late. By that point, the distance Bowman has created between himself and not just society, but by extension, the audience, is too difficult to overcome—as evidenced in the below quote.

“Suddenly, everything had fallen away. He had felt himself above other people, knowing more than they did, even pitying them. He was not related to other people—his life was another kind of life. He had invented it.”

Salter saves his best for last, with some beautiful prose at the book’s end, which does battle with a difficult-to-overcome lack of substantiality in Bowman and his chosen life. His transitory existence involves going from hotel to restaurant to party, with nothing of substance to ground him. This decision may be all part of character building, but it left at least one reader yearning to know more, to understand better.

Bowman is seduced by the allure, eroticism and promises of Manhattan (“It was like a dream, trying to imagine it all, the windows and entire floors that never went dark, the world you wanted to be in.”), yet his ephemeral existence doesn’t allow him the permanence to achieve—or really, pursue—any true goals. Or, for that matter, repercussions.

The story may have benefited more by peeling back the layers of emotions that cover Bowman. While Salter’s depictions of courtship and marriage are largely overhung with a sense of doom and impending failure, we are given occasional glimpses into Bowman’s true feelings about losing Vivian, of feeling betrayed—mostly of his own doing—by a steady line of women.

“He lay there unwillingly and sleepless, the city itself, dark and glittering, seemed empty. The same couple, the same bed, yet now not the same.”

“How did it happen, that something no longer mattered, that it had been judged inessential?”

“He saw them now for what they were and had been, the great days of love.”

Bowman seems to possess a quiet desperation that is more hinted at than revealed. It’s also possible that his lack of a father figure—not to mention his borderline-disturbing relationship with his mother—tainted his dealings with women.

“At a certain point also you began to feel that you knew everyone, there was no one new, and you were going to spend the rest of your life among familiar people, women especially.”

At the end of the day, I felt “All That Is” was somehow diminished by its lack of perspective and its disjointed nature. In addition to issues with how often it jumped around, it was hard to reconcile Bowman’s journey from war hero to douche due to the lack of insight we are offered into his thought process. Also, gender-expectation concerns aside, eroticism vs. creepiness can be a difficult balance to pull off decently, and I thought Salter struggled there.

It’s hard to ignore the brilliance in some of Salter’s writing, but for me, the seeming aimlessness and oddity of the story outweighed the prose in dragging down a promising novel.

“The power of the novel in the nation’s culture had weakened. It had happened gradually. It was something everyone recognized and ignored. All went on exactly as before, that was the beauty of it. The glory had faded but fresh faces kept appearing, wanting to be part of it, to be in publishing which had retained a suggestion of elegance like a pair of beautiful, bone-shined shoes owned by a bankrupt man.”