Book review, GODS OF TIN

Aviator=92s writings reflect religious experience of flight

Gods of Tin (Shoemaker & Hoard, $24) by James Salter

He rode upon the cherubims, and did fly: he came flying on the wings of=20
the wind. =97 Psalms 18:10
Late in the summer of 1951, James Salter was in flight school, on the=20
wing of an instructor determined to see what his young charge had in the =

way of courage. The instructor rolled over, began to dive, his airspeed=20
bringing the needle to the red line, all the while Salter followed,=20
=93fatally close.=92=92
=93A pure pale halo formed in the back of his canopy and remained there, =

streaming like smoke,=92=92 Salter wrote years later in his memoir, Burni=
ng=20
the Days.
=93I began to realize what it was about. . . . He was gauging my desire t=
o=20
belong. It was a baptism. This silent angel was to bring me to the place =

where, wet and subdued, I would be made one with the rest.=92=92
In the anthology of Salter=92s works, Gods of Tin, editors Jessica and=20
William Benton have done something interesting; they have culled from=20
his writings, including previously unpublished entries from journals,=20
the most compelling passages on flying.
In the novels The Hunters (1956) and The Arm of Flesh (1961), and again=20
in Burning the Days (1997), Salter attempted to express the=20
inexpressible, to convey moments so intensely personal that they almost=20
beggar description. (He later rewrote The Arm of Flesh and named it=20
Cassada.)
Early in Gods of Tin, he explains his rationale for flying, for=20
repeatedly risking his life in those treacherous machines of tin. His=20
roommate at West Point had a brother, a pilot.
=93When he was killed on a mission . . . I felt a secret thrill and envy.=
=20
His life, the scraps I knew of it, seemed worthy, complete. He had left=20
things behind, a woman who could never forget him; I had her picture.=20
Death seemed the purest act. Comfortably distant from it I had no fear.=92=
=92
Near the end of the book, Salter=92s 100-mission tour in Korea is at an=20
end. He is melancholy, disappointed and empty.
=93Later I felt I had not done enough, had been too reliant, too=20
unskilled. I had not done what I set out to do and might have done. I=20
felt contempt for myself, not at first but as time passed, and I ceased=20
to talk about those days, as if I had never known them.=92=92
Salter cannot explain the thrill of flying, not even to himself; cannot=20
sustain the thrill once he has stepped out of his jet for the last time. =

When he=92s done flying, he knows something has shifted, that things will=
=20
never be the same.
As a man becomes a priest and crosses over an unseen threshold, as a=20
sinner becomes a saint, so too does the pilot travel a mystical path=20
toward enlightenment. In his journal, Salter writes of a man named=20
Kasler, just landed after having recorded his fifth kill.
=93The fifth was more than just another,=92=92 he writes, =93it was=20
beatification, the step across the gulf.=92=92
Surely Salter had the flight of Icarus in mind when he wrote=20
retrospectively about his own time in the air. In religious terms =97=20
baptism, grace, angels, sacred, absolution, holy =97 he describes the act=
=20
of flying but never romanticizes it.
Gods of Tin is nicely put together. By placing all the entries, from=20
Salter=92s fiction and nonfiction, as near as possible in chronological=20
order, the reader can see how the pilot turned his diary into literature.=

And the chronology makes for powerful juxtapositions. The entry=20
immediately after Salter describes the beatification of Kasler begins=20
with the simple, declarative sentence:
=93Col. Mahurin shot down today.=92=92
Death was close when the pilots were in the sky; God close in the silence=
=2E
=93The greatest things to be seen, the ancients wrote, are sun, stars,=20
water and clouds,=92=92 he writes. =93Here among them, of what is one=20
thinking? I cannot remember but probably of nothing, of flying itself,=20
the imperishability of it, the brilliance.=92=92
After Korea, Salter remained in the Air Force, a pilot in the Cold War.=20
In Cassada it is Capt. Isbell who leads the men on their missions.
His =93true task was biblical,=92=92 Salter writes. =93It was the task of=
Moses=20
=97 he would take them to within sight of what was promised, but no=20
further. To the friezes of heaven, which nobody knew were there.=92=92
Bill Eichenberger is Dispatch book critic.