Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(34)

Still, there remains the awful fact of what happened in the White House. The acts were certainly unexampled. They amounted to evidence of an illness, and Starr and his loyal associates did what they could for the good of the country and the furtherance of justice. Never mind that the country, and its leadership, was already good. As for justice, we know quite well from the Simpson case that it will always eventually triumph.

I recall a foreshadowing in a play of Wallace Shawn’s some years ago, Aunt Dan and Lemon. In it the young protagonist imagines herself meeting Henry Kissinger. She would be fully prepared, she says, to be Kissinger’s personal slave, something she feels he would like. He could have his pleasure of her with nothing in the way of preliminaries; she knows how busy he is—an exchange of glances would do. “He served humanity. I would serve him,” she fantasizes. It is unsettling to have such thoughts committed to paper, not to speak of spoken aloud on the stage.

Jack Kennedy’s moral strength, which was part of his immense appeal, was later found to be flawed. Before these revelations, he had set in motion huge undertakings—the flight to the moon, for instance. Had it been known how hollow he actually was, perhaps Oswald would not have been impelled to shoot him—it could have been expected that he would collapse of his own accord.

I was never a great admirer of Clinton. I felt that he had somehow failed to measure up: that it was all right to duck out of fighting in a war, but if you sneaked away from fighting you should not seek to be Commander-in-Chief. Perhaps these things are no longer that closely related. In any case, today, as he is being unmercifully flayed by men undoubtedly finer but a bit less generous, I am changing my opinion. I am impressed by his grit and unfaltering dedication to the duties for which he was twice elected. If he is also shameless, he is not alone in this. There is no real beauty without some slight imperfection.

The New Yorker

October 5, 1998





The Definitive Downhill: Toni Sailer


Kitzbühel is a handsome old town known for its fine skiing and unspoiled look. The latter is an inheritance of the centuries, but the fame of the skiing is owed in part to the great racers who came from there, most of them members of the celebrated Austrian team of the 1950s, which included Sailer, Molterer, and Pravda. Toni Sailer was the most unforgettable. In the 1956 Olympics, at Cortina d’Ampezzo, he swept the three Alpine events, the only man besides Jean-Claude Killy to do it. On the way, like Killy, he won the most famous of all downhill races, Kitzbühel’s own race, the Hahnenkamm, a run of about two miles plunging through the dark firs of the Austrian Tyrol.

The Hahnenkamm is one of the oldest races, and indisputably the toughest. Characterized by extreme steepness at the start, abrupt changes of terrain, and difficult turns, it is a course that is respected and feared. It demands everything, courage, endurance, skill, and like all downhill races, a little more of yourself than you are able to give. If you win the Hahnenkamm, you have done something. Even to race in it is an achievement.

Last year, I was in Kitzbühel. I was covering the race, one of five hundred people occupied in doing it. I was trying to find someone who would take me down the course. (When the course is open, any thoroughly competent skier can do it.) I was looking for a coach or a friendly racer who could explain the details to me, the fine points only an insider would know.

“Why don’t you go down with Sailer?” someone said. “Sailer?” He was running the children’s ski school. Just go up and talk to him, they said. He had raced in the Hahnenkamm five times. He’d won it twice.

“Sailer?” I said, stalling. “Why not?” I went to the ski school, which was at the bottom of the slope, not far from the finish line. There was a little booth and I asked for Sailer. He wasn’t around, so I left a note for him, tucking it into the top of a ski rack so that his name could be seen. Later in the day I came back. This time he was there. Sailer was forty-seven but looked much younger, with the handsome, cold face of a man who has seen the heights. The note, I noticed, was still on the ski rack, unread. I explained what I wanted, to go down the course with him and have him point out its real features. Sailer was taciturn. He seemed to show very little interest. Finally he said, “All right. Meet me here at eight tomorrow morning. On second thought, make it quarter to eight.”

At seven the next morning I woke, having slept only fitfully. Outside the window children were walking to school along snowy paths in the dark. By the time I reached the meeting place it was daylight, a cold, January morning without shadow or promise of warmth. Not a soul was in sight. At exactly 7:45 a lone figure appeared carrying a pair of skis. It was Sailer. He greeted me economically and we started toward the cable car station. A few people, among them racers up for early practice, were already waiting.

Sailer, in his red parka and black pants, stood there and talked to some of them briefly, the young Austrian boys—he had been one of the team coaches for a while. Then he sat on a bench and began fastening his boots. Finally he took out two thin straps which he fastened with some care above his knees. I watched this with a vague feeling of uneasiness. We rode up in silence. Out the frosted window I could see the bare, glazed course, partly hidden by somber trees.

At the top he put on his skis without a word and headed for the small hill that went up to the starting area. We sidestepped up. The snow on top was trampled by the boots of racers who in previous days had been waiting there for their practice runs. Now it was vacant. As we began to cross it I finally stopped him to ask if we could talk for a minute about what we were going to do.