Film
In this brilliant book of recollection, one of America's finest writers re-creates people, places, and events spanning some fifty years, bringing to life an entire era through one man's sensibility. Scenes of love and desire, friendship, ambition, life in foreign cities and New York, are unforgettably rendered here in the unique style for which James Salter is widely admired.
Burning the Days captures a singular life, beginning with a Manhattan boyhood and then, satisfying his father's wishes, graduation from West Point, followed by service in the Air Force as a pilot. In some of the most evocative pages ever written about flying, Salter describes the exhilaration and terror of combat as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, scenes that are balanced by haunting pages of love and a young man's passion for women.
After resigning from the Air Force, Salter begins a second life, becoming a writer in the New York of the 1960s. Soon films beckon. There are vivid portraits of actors, directors, and producers—Polanski, Robert Redford, and others. Here also, more important, are writers who were influential, some by their character, like Irwin Shaw, others because of their taste and knowledge.
Ultimately Burning the Days is an illumination of what it is to be a man, and what it means to become a writer.
Signed first edition in near fine condition.
The first book-length biography of James Dean to appear after his death, written by a friend (and former UCLA classmate). Issued simultaneously in both paperback and hardcover. This is the Ballantine Books vintage paperback, 1956, in good condition.
The first book-length biography of Dean to appear after his death, written by a friend (and former UCLA classmate). Issued simultaneously in paperback, this is the much scarcer hardcover printing. Many years later, Bast published another book, "Surviving James Dean," that touched on certain aspects of the actor's life that were a little too sensitive to be aired in the 1950s. The striking jacket photo of Dean (by Roy Schatt) is also reproduced inside the book. VG/VG
