James Salter is an artist, living or dying by his style, which is original, spare, and soulful. His work is admired more by his peers than by the public. Saul Bellow, Graham Greene, Mavis Gallant, John Irving, and Reynolds Price, among others, have all praised his work convincingly. Four of his stories are in O. Henry prize collections; one ("Foreign Shores") appears in the 1984 Best American Stories anthology; and one story, "Akhnilo," is anthologized in American Short Story Masterpieces (1989), edited by Raymond Carver. Salter received the 1989 P.E.N./ Faulkner Award for fiction in recognition of his collection Dusk and Other Stories (1988).

Reviewers and critics agree that Salter is important; it has become almost a critical cliché to speak of him as an underrated writer, even "the most underrated underrated writer," as James Wolcott dubbed him in Vanity Fair (June 1985). His admirers, devout in their loyalty, pass...