James Salter’s All That Is was published two years ago.
Its story (if we can call it that) roughly follows the life of one man, Philip
Bowman. It opens with his experiences in the navy as a young man, and takes us
through decades of his life, as he works as a book editor in New York. The novel
revolves around his romantic and sexual experiences with various women throughout
his life, as love continues to evade him.
Before I begin, let
me say sodmething to clear my conscience. I am in general a positive person. I
like books, and I like to like books – and even if I read a book that I don’t
especially like or that isn’t really my cup of tea, I can normally find
something good to say about it. I can distance myself, be objective, point out how
it may appeal to others, if not to myself. I in general give brilliant reviews,
good reviews, or mixed reviews. I rarely give bad ones.
So I apologise for the
fact that I have nothing good to say about this book.
The writing itself is
very dull. In the spirit of objectivity, I should say that I read All That Is for a book club, and while
in general the group didn’t like the book, some other members did find the
writing quite beautiful. But for me the tone novel repeatedly failed to engage
my interest. The novel is told in a detached third person, in a very calm and dispassionate narrative voice. We never have access to Bowman’s thoughts, and so internal drama
cannot make up for the lack of external drama. The book rarely changes pace or
tone, but feels slow and calm throughout, even when describing events that should
be anything but calm. It reads, in fact, as if Salter was as bored writing it
as I was reading it.
Most books that span
large periods of time take one of two structures: either they skip from scene
to scene, missing out years or decades at a time; or they offer overview, a
broad scope of a character’s life. All
That Is lies somewhere in-between, meaning we don’t get the benefits of either
model. We get only half-developed scenes, and we skim, not skip, over time; we
neither get any real sense of change over time, nor the powerful feelings of
the moment.
The characters are
underdeveloped and mostly forgettable. So many people flit through Bowman’s
life and the reader struggles to remember which is which because all of them
are fairly indistinct. Stranger still is that we don’t always follow Bowman’s
life; occasionally Salter’s narrative follows one of these minor characters
whose names we can’t remember, and we are given snatches of stories that never
fully develop into subplots. For example, we occasionally slip into the life of
Bowman’s friend Eddins. We see a few scenes from his perspective that are
nothing to do with Bowman – but only three or four, never enough to make Eddins
a main character or to make his plot of significance. Moreover, Eddins’s story
does not link up in any way to Bowman’s, excepting that they once worked
together. I was left wondering just quite what the sections about Eddins are
doing in the book at all. In fact, with many of the characters I just can’t
work out what on earth their significance is supposed to be. Again, I feel
Salter may have been trying to imitate life, but it simply doesn’t work on the
page; most of the characters end up feeling forgettable and irrelevant.
Even Bowman himself
is not really developed as a character; we never get to see inside his head; we
rarely even get a glimpse of what he might be thinking. Nor do we even get to
see him work. He’s a book editor, which could prove very interesting – only Salter
never delves into this. For a novel about a book editor, there are surprisingly
few mentions of books. Nor does Slater delve into Bowman’s reactions; important
events happen in his life and we never really see how Bowman thinks or feels
about them; we often don’t even see what he does in the immediate aftermath. We
never get a real sense of him as a person, and by the end of the book the only
thing I felt I even knew about Bowman was that he was a misogynist.
Which neatly brings
us to my biggest issue with this book: the misogyny. Philip Bowman both idolises
and objectifies women, to the extent that they are denied any form of humanity,
expression or even character. His relationships with the various women he is
supposedly “in love with” are entirely sexual; for him, women appear to have no
emotional or physical worth that is not connected to sex or their bodies. Bowman
takes a string of young female lovers, and even when he is in his fifties and sixties,
he is still sleeping with women in their twenties (or younger), because he
finds them more desirable. The sex scenes are so badly-written and focused on
Bowman’s virility and “manhood” that at times the book just reads like the
sexual fantasies of an older man.
Yet what I take issue
with is not Bowman’s misogyny. There is, of course, a difference between a book
about sexism and a sexist book. And there is a very interesting novel to be
written about how chauvinistic men interact with women, so long as the author
does not partake in the misogynistic tone of their protagonist. As it is,
however, the closest Salter gets to acknowledging that there is anything wrong
with Bowman’s attitude towards women is to have one female character observe to
herself that something Bowman says is slightly chauvinistic. This is one sentence
in a four-hundred page novel. More importantly, not a single female character in
this book is fully – or even slightly – developed. There are moments when
Vivian is almost portrayed as a human being, but for the rest of the novel Bowman
moves through a series of women, whose only quality Salter finds worth
mentioning is their bodies. They are relatively indistinguishable, and none are
given the slightest trace of characterisation or emotional depth. Nor can this
be dismissed as us seeing the women as Bowman sees them, for the book is
written in third person, and quite a distant third person at that. We are not
seeing the women through Bowman’s eyes but through the author’s, and the author
clearly does not view them as full human beings. This aspect of the book reminded
me greatly of the attitude towards women that you find in many
twentieth-century books, such as some works by Evelyn Waugh – and yet All That Is was published just two years
ago.
So I do not recommend
James Salter’s All That Is. It has very
little plot and lacks coherence as a work of art – and nor does any other
aspect of the book make up for this. It had no clear themes, nor much perceivable
depth. I found the characterisation flat at best, and the writing unimpassioned
and dull. Moreover, it is an unpleasantly misogynistic book, where both
protagonist and author deny women any form of humanity or real worth. This book is currently rivalling Dracula and Robin Crusoe for the slot of my least favourite book of all time.
Greatest
strength: … (This
is the first time in over a year of book reviews that I have had nothing to put
here.)
Greatest
weakness: As I
have said, there were many, many problems I had with this book. The aspect of
it that most infuriated me was definitely Salter’s presentation of women.
Let’s
finish on a quote:
‘He wanted to say something but couldn’t decide what it would be.’
Yes. This sums up the
book nicely.
Next week: Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee.
Click below for more reviews:
(These three are books which I feel achieve what Salter was trying to do in All That Is.
They write about ordinary life, if with a twist.)
(These three are books which I feel achieve what Salter was trying to do in All That Is.
They write about ordinary life, if with a twist.)
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