James Salter's LIGHT YEARS, prose on time passage

James Salter holds the distinction of having flown more combat missions than any other highly awarded author.  He may hold the dubious distinction of being one of the best, but perhaps least known writers.  Salter's career began in the U.S. Air Force but came to a screeching halt when he crashed landed his plane into a residential neighborhood; fortunately without incurring casualties.   Afterwards, he was assigned to military service in the Phillipines and later volunteered for combat duty in the Korean War.  In the War he flew over 100 comat missions.  His writing career began with his civilian life.  He turned to his experiences from the Korean War for his first novels.  LIGHT YEARS from '95, tells of the mundane married lives of Viri and Nedra and their two daughters.  However, the simplicity of the story is anything but pedestrian.  The reader is swept along with the melancholy of fleeting years, the dissolution of a marriage and the epiphanies that arise from having lived.  Seasons pass, the years surmount calling into question our own mortality, "The house is surrounded by white.  Hours of sleep, the air chill.  The most delicious sleep, is death so warm, so easeful?" The seemingly idyllic union of Nedra & Viri, having a perfect facade, is not as it appears. "Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to bring into light and shadow."  Salter's style pays homage to Woolf, Ibsen and in particular, Wilder's THE LONG CHRISTMAS DINNER.  By comparing Salter to such literary greats I honor his illuminating writing.  Still, I place him in a contemporary class of his own.  His writing has earned him a PEN/Faulker Award.  He's elected to the Amer. Acad. of Arts & Letters '00 and selected for the 25th PEN/Malamud Award.  I will be attending the 92ndY's Talk with James Salter & Richard Ford.  I recommend the works of  Mr. Salter's and not to miss this opportunity of a lifetime to hear him in person.