''A Sport and a Pastime'' (1967) is a novel by the American writer

James Salter James Arnold Horowitz (June 10, 1925 – June 19, 2015), better known as James Salter, his pen name and later-adopted legal name, was an American novelist and short-story writer. Originally a career officer and pilot in the United States Air For ...

Summary

Set in France in the early 1960s, the sad and tender story concerns the erotic affair of American middle-class college drop-out Philip Dean and a young French girl, Anne-Marie, as witnessed by a self-consciously unreliable narrator. The unnamed narrator freely admits that much of his observation is in fact his own fantasy of the couple, and includes a number of sexually-explicit descriptions of their day-to-day existence as he imagines it.

Location

Many of the story's events take place in the town of

Autun Autun () is a subprefecture of the Saône-et-Loire department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of central-eastern France. It was founded during the Principate era of the early Roman Empire by Emperor Augustus as Augustodunum to give a Ro ...

Burgundy Burgundy (; french: link=no, Bourgogne ) is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. The c ...

Reception

The book is generally regarded by critics as a modern classic. In ''

The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

'', novelist and critic

Reynolds Price Edward Reynolds Price (February 1, 1933 – January 20, 2011) was an American poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist and James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. Apart from English literature, Price had a lifelong interest in Biblical ...

wrote, "Of living novelists, none has produced a novel I admire more than ''A Sport and a Pastime'' ... it's as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know." The critic and biographer

Adam Begley Adam C. Begley (born 1959 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American freelance writer, and was the books editor for ''The New York Observer'' from 1996 to 2009. Begley is the son of Sally (Higginson) and novelist Louis Begley. He graduated from Harv ...

, in ''

The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine Supplement (publishing), supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted man ...

'', called it "extraordinary ... The book feels utterly true."Adam Begley, ''The New York Times Magazine'', "A Few Well-Chosen Words," October 28, 1990.
/ref> After Salter's death in 2015, the novel has continued to receive critical attention. In 2017, Sarah Hall (writing for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'') observed that:

References

1967 American novels Fiction with unreliable narrators Novels set in France Novels set in the 1950s Novels by James Salter {{1960s-erotic-novel-stub