James Sallis is an American crime writer, poet, critic, musicologist and musician, best known for his series of novels featuring the detective character Lew Griffin and set in New Orleans, and for his 2005 novel Drive, which was adapted into a 2011 film of the same name. Sallis began writing science fiction for magazines in the late 1960s. Having sold several stories to Damon Knight for his Orbit series of anthologies, and a story to Michael Moorcock by the time he was in his mid-twenties, Sallis was then invited to go to London to help edit New Worlds just as it changed to its large format during its Michael Moorcock-directed New Wave SF phase; Sallis published his first sf story, "Kazoo" there in 1967 and was co-editor from April 1968 through Feb 1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant-garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work limited his appeal in the science fiction world, though he received some critical acclaim for A Few Last Words. Sallis has been influenced by French New Novelists including Michel Butor and Robbe-Grillet. Camus’ L'Etranger is mentioned in each of Sallis's novels. Later short work appeared in the USA through the 1970s and 1980s. He is the brother of philosopher John Sallis.
Career and critical reception
Sallis has worked as a creative writing teacher, respiratory therapist, musician, music teacher, screenwriter, periodical editor, book reviewer, and translator, winning acclaim for his 1993 version of Raymond Queneau's Saint Glinglin. Trained as a respiratory therapist, Sallis worked in intensive care for both adults and newborns at many hospitals. In 2000 he appeared as himself in the UK Channel 4 project Asylum —a mix of both documentary and fiction, where in the future a group of people are looking back at the twentieth century after a virus has wiped out most of the culture—written and directed by Christopher Petit and Iain Sinclair. Sallis appeas alongside Michael Moorcock and Ed Dorn. In 2012 he played a small part as a detective in the film The Detective's Lover directed by Travis Mills. He taught writing classes at Otis College in Los Angeles and until September 2015 at Phoenix College in Arizona; he left his job rather than sign a state-mandated loyalty oath that he regards as unconstitutional. As a writer Sallis has surprised many by not often appearing in the critics’ top rank of American writers. In Lit HubLisa Levy considered his output significant and diverse and ranked him as perhaps alongside Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon. On noir Sallis argues it is an oppositional form, working not to reinforce American culture but to subvert it, “there is no moral order save which a man creates from himself. Like high art, these stories worked hard to unfold the lies society tells us and the lies we tell ourselves".
Hammett Award for literary excellence in crime writing
Novels
;Lew Griffin series Lew Griffin is an African-American amateur detective, functioning alcoholic, sometime teacher and novelist. In The Long-Legged Flythe narrative opens with Griffin committing a murder only obliquely referred to again, creating a pervasive sense of guilt which dogs Griffin throughout the subsequent three decades through several missing-person's cases and his own back story.
* Reprint: No Exit Press, 1996
* Reprints: No Exit Press, 1996; Walker & Co., 2003
* Reprints: No Exit Press, 1997; Walker & Co, 2003
Driven Seven years after the events of “Drive” Driver is now living in Phoenix under the name Paul West, engaged to be married. When two goons attack him and his fiancée, leaving her dead, Driver seeks vengeance.
My Tongue in Other Cheeks — selected translations of poems from French, Spanish and Russian.
Adaptations
;Radio Eye of the Cricket was adapted for BBC Radio 7 as part of the Readings to Die For series. It aired in 2007, 2008 and 2010. The main voice artist was Ray Shell. ;Film In 2011, Sallis' novel Drive was adapted by director Nicolas Winding Refn into a film of the same name starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan.
