Mind Over Midnight: A Book Club - A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter

Not your average book club. We dive into books that don’t flinch at existential crises, societal breakdowns, the spectacle of modern life, addiction, and the mess of being human. Drinks and hard questions are welcome. This is a book club for those who want to wrestle with heavy texts, challenging ideas, and the uncomfortable truths of existence. We read works that demand deep thought, including philosophical discussions, cultural critique, raw memoirs, and literature that refuse easy answers.

Each month features a new title that we will examine. For our upcoming February Mind Over Midnight session, we will examine James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime, a novel that strips love, desire, and masculinity down to their rawest elements. Told through an unreliable, voyeuristic narrator, the book blurs fantasy and reality, obsession, and intimacy. Beneath its sensual surface lies a meditation on male longing, passivity, and the desire to witness rather than participate in life. As we meet, we will question whether this is a celebration of erotic freedom or a quiet tragedy of detachment and self-erasure.