The book "All This" by James Salt tells the story of a ship sailing to Okinawa at the end of World War II. The protagonist Philip Bowman is a young naval officer. Over the next few decades, he returned to New York and became a publishing editor, settling into a life of book deals, literary careers, and one dinner party after another. He married and divorced, experienced new relationships, recurring physical passions, and brutal betrayals. Old friends drift apart, houses are bought and sold, parents die, and loving bonds fade and fade. When we last see Bowman, he has reached an age where he is seriously thinking about death: he wants to return to the Pacific, where "the only brave part of his life was."
"All This" is the life trajectory of an ordinary person, and it is also a rich social chronicle. The narrative perspective switches freely between the protagonist and dozens of characters. A large number of insightful details give it an epic quality. The scenes, episodes and characters are as precise and neat as diamond cutouts. The story and the emotions it contains continue to expand and spread, reflecting the outline of the lives of all the characters who appear in the passage of time. .
There is no need to summarize the content of this book, because there is no clear starting point, turning point, and touching imaginary world, but just the life of one person, a group of people, and a world. Some people say that there are about a hundred characters, but it does not appear complicated and busy, but old friends who have not been reunited for a long time are discovered in a few words. The moment they meet is heart-pounding.
I like Sauter's writing style. There are many interesting ideas and ideas, which are soaked in a kind of loss and helplessness, and dipped in a few fragrant sauces similar to "Midnight in Paris". After all, that era was still There are several living masters (although most of them are very individual beings) who are covered with a gauze woven of eroticism and desire, but behind them are fragmented brittle fragments of self.
What is "all this"? It is survival, it is death, it is betrayal, it is desolation, it is alienation, it is lust, it is departure, it is transformation, it is unrestrained, it is shirk, it is compromise, it is true love, it is falsehood... It is the beginning and end of everything, it is everything. The flow of everything is ordinary and rugged life, the present, the present, and the future.
There is no way to feel sentimental or self-pity, so we can only reunite in this small world.