THE HUNTERS by James Salter - a review

"The Hunters" is James Salter's first novel, in which he draws on his experience as a fighter pilot in the Korean war to draw a powerful portrait of the day to day operations in a group of pilots in the Korean peninsula - and the toll it takes on the unfortunate hero, called Cleve Connell.

                     A MIG-15 captured by the guncam of an American pilot, somewhere above Korea. [Source]

The novel is rather short and follows more or less the adventures of its hero during a one year period. Cleve Connell is a 31 years old pilot (which is very old for a pilot at that time) who is affected to a squadron in Korea where he hopes to make his mark and to become an ace. 

                             

                               James Salter himself, at the commands of his fighter jet in Korea. [Source]

The depiction of the squadron life is succinct and "to the bone", because obviously James Salter wants to make it an allegory about his vision of life itself:

                                                             

More especially, there is this idea which runs through the book that fighter pilots are not like the common soldiers because the "esprit de corps" requires constant emulation and even competition. Their mode of fighting makes the pilots jealous and envious of each other from the start:

To become an ace, a pilot needs to have a minimum of 5 kills confirmed. This is what all the men in the flights are speaking about, thinking about and hoping about. Cleve Connell is not different from them. He is a professionnal and wants more and more desperately to prove his mettle.

From one horizon of the world to the other he had come, across endless waters, feeling continually more mortal and insignificant as he went, like a swimmer moving further and further from shore. Now he did not look back. The trip behind was a bridge gone. There was no returning. He had crossed to the war, and a great sense of excitement was on him.

The Korean War (1950-53) was a fertile ground for epic dogfights between the F86-Sabre American planes and the Migs-15 of the Koreans. The more I read this novel, the more i had to know about the way the war was fought in the air above Korea between American and Russian/Chinese/Koreans fighter pilots. 

                                                      

                           An action-packed cover for a much more introspective novel than it might seem at first. 

However, in the novel, things don't turn as Cleve expected them: mission after mission, weeks after weeks, months after months, he remains without any "kill". The MIGs elude him. It's like he is doomed, and only that when he does not fly that the adversary is appearing and all the glory and the action is for his comrades and the other pilots. 

The mystic tissue that joined the soul of a man together, he felt it dissolving. He had to succeed. If he could only find them. He needed just a fragment of triumph, only that, to remove the doubts.

Bittered and depressed, Cleve Connell must watch and hear other pilots claim victories after victories and must pretend to share their pride and joy, while feeling like there is something wrong with him. Even worse, the pilots in his own squadron start to think that there is something wrong with him. Not necessarily that he is a coward, but worse: that his luck has run out. Cleve feels trapped by the exigency of his function and his inability to deliver:

He was a prisoner of the war. If he did not get MIGs, he would have failed, not only in his own eyes but in everyone's.

As a war novel, it does not deliver really much action, but it absolutely must be one of the most beautiful book written about war - at least in the air. The loneliness felt by Cleve is expertly distilled, his doubts and his feelings of inadequacy really make you root for this guy, and you will end up raging against his younger pilots who get all the MIGs and the credit instead of him. Eventually, of course, you know that at some point Cleve will have his opportunity. And it does come, in a gripping and fascinating chapter, a climax of action and tension which will keep you on the edge of the seat, trying to visualize the dogfight between Cleve and the MIGs. However, as always with Salter, the ending is more bittersweet than a happy one. 

Let's just say, not to spoil anything, that Cleve will have the chance to redeem himself - in his eyes at least - in superb fashion:

With his eyes closed to make a double darkness, he lay awake in the still summer night, victorious at last and feeling as little desire to love as he had ever known.