VwXTZ (Read and download) All That Is: A Novel Online [VwXTZ.ebook] All That Is: A Novel Pdf Free James Salter audiobook | *ebooks | Download PDF | ePub | DOC Download Now Free Download Here Download eBook #4871227 in Books 2013-05-01Formats: Audiobook, UnabridgedOriginal language:EnglishPDF # 1 7.60 x .60 x 5.40l, .15 Running time: 36000 secondsBinding: MP3 CD | File size: 35.Mb James Salter : All That Is: A Novel before purchasing it in order to gage whether or not it would be worth my time, and all praised All That Is: A Novel: 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Another summing up…By John P. Jones IIIThis is the third book of James Salter that I have read. I have previously read A Sport and a Pastime: A Novel (FSG Classics) and Burning the Days: Recollection, the latter being his memoirs. The author has lived life to the full, and once again I was impressed with his insights and writing style. This time there seemed to be no negatives that I perceived in the other books. I note some of the other reviewer’s criticisms, for example that it is disjointed, and even pornographic. I found him a shade misogynistic in “A Sport…” but not so in this one. “Age cannot wither, nor custom stale her infinite variety” to quote a bit of Shakespeare, and so too the infinite ways she can say “Yes,” even enthusiastically so, as James Joyce once noted at the close of his masterpiece.The protagonist is Philip Bowman, and the book opens in the Pacific Ocean, towards the end of World War II, as the Americans were preparing to invade Okinawa. Only one chapter is on the war; soon, via a shameless story, he had gained admission to Harvard. Upon graduation, he seeks a job with the New York Times. He meets with an august “power broker” who is arrogant and dismissive. One has to think that the scene was largely autobiographical, and although a very minor scene, the insult had to rankle all those many years later.He does secure a position with a small but upscale publishing house, and the literary world will be his career, much to the reader’s benefit. Numerous references and stories about literary greats, and this novel has pushed me to finally read Lorca. Serendipity leads to a marriage with a young woman from Virginia horse country, which the reader learns was originally established by the Mellon’s. Part of the legacy he has married into is an alcoholic mother-in-law and a stern, philandering father-in-law that has tastes for women half his age. It is a scathing portrait of an incestuous in-grown society, with a “do not talk” code of conduct.A doomed marriage that does not last. At least half the novel is his seeming drift from one semi-permanent female relationship to the next, all of which are quite different. There are several significant minor characters, each also plodding through jobs for economic security as well as their relationships with the other sex. I found the novel rather fast-paced, with some surprising twists and turns. Again, and yet again Salter provides deep insights into motivation and character of a spectrum of people that a younger man – certainly myself – were utterly oblivious too as I was growing up.The author includes a memorable critique of what has occurred in the publishing industry in his lifetime: “The power of the novel in the nation’s culture has weakened. It had happened gradually. It was something everyone recognized and ignored. All went on 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.” 5-stars.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Bittersweet life-story of a fiction editor whose Mom, named Beatrice, warns about the perils of infatuationBy Ethan CooperIn ALL THAT IS, the protagonist, Philip Bowman, is a fiction editor who spends his entire career at Braden and Baum, a small but successful Manhattan publisher with a balanced list of literary fiction, best-sellers, and poetry. While Salter does occasionally show Bowman, a Harvard graduate, reading a manuscript deep into the night or cultivating contacts in the publishing world, the true subject of ATI is Bowman’s personal life, which evolves in exquisite but simple profundity over four decades.In general, this personal life is the young and infatuated Bowman marrying the beautiful, dull, and snobbish Vivian, whose horsey WASP father is reprehensible; the established and divorced Bowman developing a relationship with the attractive and sophisticated London-based Enid before they drift apart; Bowman finding happiness with the seductive divorcee Christine, who shares the quality of sexy duplicity with her rebellious teenage daughter; and Bowman finally finding his soul-mate, who is a cosmopolitan woman who actually reads and enjoys fiction.Of course, at this point, Bowman is no longer young. “He had been weeding in the garden that afternoon and looked down to see, beneath his tennis shorts, a pair of legs that seemed to belong to an older man. He mustn’t, he realized, be going around the house in shorts like this… He had to be careful about such things…”James Salter is beautiful stylist who is a pleasure to read. Here, for example, is Salter inhabiting the sixty-something Bowman, pensive and alone, as his soul-mate is visiting her parents.o “He often thought about death but usually in pity for an animal or fish or seeing the dying grass in the fall or the monarch butterflies clinging to milkweed and feeding for the great funeral flight. Were they aware of it somehow, the strength it would take, the heroic strength? He thought about death, but he had never been able to imagine it, the unbeing while all else still existed. The idea of passing from this world to another, the next, was too fantastic to believe.”o “He wondered then, as he often did, how much of life remained for him. He was certain of only one thing, whatever was to come was the same for everyone who had ever lived. He would be going where they all had gone and—it was difficult to believe—all he had known would go with him, the war… London those first days, the lunch with Christine, her gorgeous body… the great liners with their invincible bodies readying to sail… the first voice he ever knew, his mother’s…”Great, isn’t it?At the same time, Salter includes in ATI two of the most stunningly malevolent, yet fully credible, plot twists ever. Sounds interesting, right? Even so, here I shall only add that one plot twist involves real estate and the other revenge. Editors are people too, I guess.A great book and highly recommended.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. exquisite, powerful, stunningBy John E. DruryJames Salter's "All That Is" recounts the literary life and loves of mild mannered, cultured Philip Bowman, a World War Navy veteran, a well-respected book editor in Manhattan. This is Salter at his best, perhaps his last book,his spare, artfully chosen Hemingway-esque prose achingly beautiful.One comes easily to know and understand Bowman's character, but Salter's stunning cameos of Bowman's friends, contemporaries and six lovers demonstrate characterization rarely seen in modern American fiction. The biting portrait of Bowman’s father-in-law will chill the Middleburg Virginia horsey set. Bowman’s employer’s wife, an incidental character, is superb as he uses her as an entry point to his admiration for a strong female in Manhattan and then delving into the reality that he, Bowman, is not Jewish, “not being one of them, of being an outsider.”The late day ambiance of Harvard Yard glows as Salter fuses light and sound and nostalgia; “[l]ate in the day, the deep resounding bells began, solemn and grand, ringing on and on …finally fading in calm, endless strokes, soft as caresses.” His descriptions of Bowman’s sexual encounters with the various women are explicit - almost erotic - but never pornographic; the anguish of Bowman’s marriage haunts him; leading to betrayals, heartbreaks and one short affair so surprising one gasps at the brutality of its ending; chalk it up to Salter’s elliptical treatment of the male libido heightened by his stunning, superbly paced writing.Near the end, Salter notes that the “power of the novel in the nation’s culture had weakened. It had happened gradually.” This prescience at his age may be correct as the author looks back from his advanced age. Rather, one would hope that his literary output, his elegance in writing - if this is his last book - would influence other talented writers in the future to write like him.But, sadly, there will only be one James Salter. [MP3CD Audiobook format in Vinyl case] [Read by Joe Barrett] An extraordinary literary event, a major new novel by the PEN/Faulkner winner and acclaimed master, here is a sweeping, seductive, deeply moving story set in the years after World War II. After his experiences as a young naval officer in battles off Okinawa, Philip Bowman returns to America and finds a position as a book editor. It is a time when publishing is still largely a private affair – a scattered family of small houses here and in Europe – a time of gatherings in fabled apartments and conversations that continue long into the night.