A short life of the author
Mark Salzman (born 3 December 1959) is an American writer and cellist whose small, carefully crafted body of work moves between memoir and fiction with a contemplative attentiveness that distinguishes him from nearly every other contemporary American author. His books — from the martial-arts memoir Iron & Silk (1986) to the monastery novel Lying Awake (2000) to the meditation diary The Man in the Empty Boat (2012) — are united by an interest in discipline, practice, and the moments when sustained effort produces something that feels like grace.
Life
Salzman was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, and grew up fascinated by Chinese culture and martial arts. He studied Chinese language and literature at Yale, then spent two years (1982–1984) teaching English at the Hunan Medical University in Changsha, China. During this time he studied wushu (Chinese martial arts) with Pan Qingfu, one of China’s foremost martial arts teachers. He is also a trained cellist who has played since childhood.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the filmmaker Jessica Yu, and has been a volunteer writing teacher at the Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles — an experience that produced one of his best books.
Iron & Silk (1986)
Salzman’s first book is a memoir of his two years in Changsha — teaching English to Chinese medical students, studying martial arts with Teacher Pan, navigating the bewildering social codes of 1980s China, and discovering that the romantic idea of China he had carried since childhood bore only a complicated relationship to the real country.
The book’s charm lies in its observational precision and its tonal control: Salzman writes with humour and self-awareness about cross-cultural misunderstanding without condescension or exoticisation. Iron & Silk was a bestseller and was adapted into a 1990 film in which Salzman played himself.
The Soloist (1994)
A novel about Renne Sundheimer, a cellist and former child prodigy who has lost the ability to perform — frozen by the gap between his technical mastery and his inability to make music that feels genuine. The novel is one of the most psychologically acute portrayals of artistic paralysis in contemporary fiction, and Salzman’s own experience as a cellist gives the descriptions of practice, performance, and the relationship between discipline and inspiration a texture that no non-musician could achieve.
Lying Awake (2000)
Sister John of the Cross, a Carmelite nun in a Los Angeles monastery, has experienced intense mystical visions that have also produced her finest poetry. Then medical tests reveal that the visions may be caused by temporal lobe epilepsy. If she has surgery, the epilepsy — and the visions — will stop. The novel poses a devastating question: if mystical experience has a neurological basis, does that invalidate it?
Lying Awake is barely 180 pages long, but its brevity is the product of compression, not thinness. Salzman renders the daily life of the monastery — the silence, the liturgical hours, the slow rhythms of communal living — with the same specificity he brought to Chinese martial arts training. The theological question at the novel’s centre is handled without resolution: Salzman trusts the reader to sit with the ambiguity.
True Notebooks (2003)
A memoir of Salzman’s experience teaching creative writing to juvenile offenders at the Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. The book presents the boys’ writing — violent, funny, heartbreaking, and often astonishingly talented — alongside Salzman’s account of his own creative struggles. It is one of the best books about teaching writing ever published.
The Man in the Empty Boat (2012)
A brief, eccentric memoir about Salzman’s struggles with anxiety, insomnia, and the desire for spiritual peace — told through accounts of his meditation practice, his martial arts training, and his encounters with Zen Buddhism. The book is characteristically honest and self-deprecating.
Critical Standing
Salzman is one of those writers whose reputation among readers far exceeds his visibility in the literary marketplace. His books are beloved by the people who find them but are not widely promoted or discussed. Lying Awake is increasingly recognised as a small masterpiece — one of the finest American novels about religious experience published in recent decades.
Collecting Salzman
Iron & Silk (1986, Random House) in first edition brings $20–$50. Lying Awake (2000, Knopf) firsts are $15–$40. His books are modestly priced and represent excellent value. Signed copies are occasionally available.