This is an experiment. I am reading James Salter, 88, about his life, a life, about love and sex, so far, marriage in the fifties, New York in the fifties. There is a certain Mad Men glow over this book All That Is which seems to capture something in the mind of the reader today as did Mad Men a while ago before it became too boring in comparison to Breaking Bad – “which is essentially the story of an underpaid teacher who gets cancer and has to turn to crime because his country doesn*t have socialised healthcare” as the Facebook outlet of Occupy London has pointed out: And if Salter is Mad Men, then Thomas Pynchon is Breaking Bad. This is the other book I am reading, Bleeding Edge, Pynchon*s story set in the New York of 2001, just before the hit. Toxic. Salter vs. Pynchon, this is: Dry Martini vs. Crystal Meth. Marital fidelity vs. metaphysical paranoia. Linear biography vs. comic characters. Publishing industry vs. technological tragedy. From A to B vs. and back. This was Warhol who said this, as you know. He was the shift. After Warhol nothing was the same. He was this dent in time. A cliff. You thought they never come back. But they always come back. So it might seem odd that Salter can command such attention with a tale so simple. But then again it is not odd. It is what it is. All that is. It is the longing of people for a straight story. For less Big Data and more Small Lies. I will tell you how these two aging giants of American literatur face-off. These are two tales of – what exactly?