Twenty-year-old Yale dropout Phillip Dean is traveling Europe aimlessly in a borrowed car with little money, until stopping for a few days in a church-quiet town near Dijon, where he meets Anne-Marie Costallat, a young shop assistant. She quickly becomes to him the real France, its beating heart and an object of pure longing. The two begin an affair both carnal and innocent. Beautiful and haunting, A Sport and a Pastime is one of the first great American novels to speak frankly of human desire and the yearning for passion free of guilt and shame. This ebook features an illustrated biography of James Salter including rare photos from the author's personal collection.
"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know."
The New York Times
"Sentence for sentence, Salter is the master."
Richard Ford
"A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliff-hanger; an opaline vision of Americans in France. . . . A Sport and a Pastime succeeds as art must. It tells us about ourselves."
