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The William H. Gass Reader
A literary delight--a reading feast; a Gassian celebration--the best of the best: more than fifty selections chosen by Gass himself from his essays, criticism, commentary, short stories, and novels.
It begins with his essays, in which Gass looks back at varying points in his writing life at those writers (from Plato, Hobbes, and James, to Joyce, Beckett, Stein, and Gaddis) whose work he found inspiring . . . and at those whose work he explores and embraces (Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy; Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End; Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain; Stendhal's The Red and the Black). He writes (from A Temple of Texts) on the nature and value of writing ("The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words").
Here is a rich experience of Gass's short fiction: from Eyes, his masterfully crafted novella, "In Camera," about collecting, hording; about suspicions run amok . . . from Cartesian Sonata . . . and In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968), a mythical reimagining of America's heartland.
And from his nimble, daredevil novels: Middle C (2013), the chronicle of an Austrian-born man who, as a child with his mother, relocates to America's Midwest (Woodbine, Ohio), grows up a low-skilled amateur piano player to become a music professor at a small Bible college; his only hobby a fantasy life as the curator of his Inhumanity Museum . . . and from The Tunnel ("The most beautiful, most complex, most disturbing novel to be published in my lifetime" --Michael Silverblatt, Los Angeles Times).
It begins with his essays, in which Gass looks back at varying points in his writing life at those writers (from Plato, Hobbes, and James, to Joyce, Beckett, Stein, and Gaddis) whose work he found inspiring . . . and at those whose work he explores and embraces (Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy; Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End; Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain; Stendhal's The Red and the Black). He writes (from A Temple of Texts) on the nature and value of writing ("The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words").
Here is a rich experience of Gass's short fiction: from Eyes, his masterfully crafted novella, "In Camera," about collecting, hording; about suspicions run amok . . . from Cartesian Sonata . . . and In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968), a mythical reimagining of America's heartland.
And from his nimble, daredevil novels: Middle C (2013), the chronicle of an Austrian-born man who, as a child with his mother, relocates to America's Midwest (Woodbine, Ohio), grows up a low-skilled amateur piano player to become a music professor at a small Bible college; his only hobby a fantasy life as the curator of his Inhumanity Museum . . . and from The Tunnel ("The most beautiful, most complex, most disturbing novel to be published in my lifetime" --Michael Silverblatt, Los Angeles Times).
944 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2018
80 people are currently reading
1293 people want to read
About the author
William H. Gass
63 books703 followersWilliam Howard Gass was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and former philosophy professor.
Gass was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Warren, Ohio, where he attended local schools. He has described his childhood as an unhappy one, with an abusive, racist father and a passive, alcoholic mother; critics would later cite his characters as having these same qualities.
He attended Wesleyan University, then served as an Ensign in the Navy during World War II, a period he describes as perhaps the worst of his life. He earned his A.B. in philosophy from Kenyon College in 1947, then his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1954, where he studied under Max Black. His dissertation, "A Philosophical Investigation of Metaphor", was based on his training as a philosopher of language. In graduate school Gass read the work of Gertrude Stein, who influenced his writing experiments.
Gass taught at The College of Wooster, Purdue University, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a professor of philosophy (1969 - 1978) and the David May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities (1979 - 1999). His colleagues there have included the writers Stanley Elkin, Howard Nemerov (1988 Poet Laureate of the United States), and Mona Van Duyn (1992 Poet Laureate). Since 2000, Gass has been the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities.
Earning a living for himself and his family from university teaching, Gass began to publish stories that were selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of 1959, 1961, 1962, 1968 and 1980, as well as Two Hundred Years of Great American Short Stories. His first novel, Omensetter's Luck, about life in a small town in Ohio in the 1890s, was published in 1966. Critics praised his linguistic virtuosity, establishing him as an important writer of fiction. In 1968 he published In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, five stories dramatizing the theme of human isolation and the difficulty of love. Three years later Gass wrote Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, an experimental novella illustrated with photographs and typographical constructs intended to help readers free themselves from the linear conventions of narrative. He has also published several collections of essays, including On Being Blue (1976) and Finding a Form (1996). His latest work of fiction, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, was published in 1998. His work has also appeared in The Best American Essays collections of 1986, 1992, and 2000.
Gass has cited the anger he felt during his childhood as a major influence on his work, even stating that he writes "to get even." Despite his prolific output, he has said that writing is difficult for him. In fact, his epic novel The Tunnel, published in 1995, took Gass 26 years to compose. An unabridged audio version of The Tunnel was released in 2006, with Gass reading the novel himself.
When writing, Gass typically devotes enormous attention to the construction of sentences, arguing their importance as the basis of his work. His prose has been described as flashy, difficult, edgy, masterful, inventive, and musical. Steven Moore, writing in The Washington Post has called Gass "the finest prose stylist in America." Much of Gass' work is metafictional.
Gass has received many awards and honors, including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1965, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1970. He won the Pushcart Prize awards in 1976, 1983, 1987, and 1992, and in 1994 he received the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literature of the Midwest. He has teaching awards from Purdue University and Washington University; in 1968 the Chicago Tribune Award as One of the Ten Best Teachers in the Big Ten. He was a Getty Foundation Fellow in 1991-1992. He received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997; and the American Book Award for The
Gass was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Warren, Ohio, where he attended local schools. He has described his childhood as an unhappy one, with an abusive, racist father and a passive, alcoholic mother; critics would later cite his characters as having these same qualities.
He attended Wesleyan University, then served as an Ensign in the Navy during World War II, a period he describes as perhaps the worst of his life. He earned his A.B. in philosophy from Kenyon College in 1947, then his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1954, where he studied under Max Black. His dissertation, "A Philosophical Investigation of Metaphor", was based on his training as a philosopher of language. In graduate school Gass read the work of Gertrude Stein, who influenced his writing experiments.
Gass taught at The College of Wooster, Purdue University, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a professor of philosophy (1969 - 1978) and the David May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities (1979 - 1999). His colleagues there have included the writers Stanley Elkin, Howard Nemerov (1988 Poet Laureate of the United States), and Mona Van Duyn (1992 Poet Laureate). Since 2000, Gass has been the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities.
Earning a living for himself and his family from university teaching, Gass began to publish stories that were selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of 1959, 1961, 1962, 1968 and 1980, as well as Two Hundred Years of Great American Short Stories. His first novel, Omensetter's Luck, about life in a small town in Ohio in the 1890s, was published in 1966. Critics praised his linguistic virtuosity, establishing him as an important writer of fiction. In 1968 he published In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, five stories dramatizing the theme of human isolation and the difficulty of love. Three years later Gass wrote Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, an experimental novella illustrated with photographs and typographical constructs intended to help readers free themselves from the linear conventions of narrative. He has also published several collections of essays, including On Being Blue (1976) and Finding a Form (1996). His latest work of fiction, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, was published in 1998. His work has also appeared in The Best American Essays collections of 1986, 1992, and 2000.
Gass has cited the anger he felt during his childhood as a major influence on his work, even stating that he writes "to get even." Despite his prolific output, he has said that writing is difficult for him. In fact, his epic novel The Tunnel, published in 1995, took Gass 26 years to compose. An unabridged audio version of The Tunnel was released in 2006, with Gass reading the novel himself.
When writing, Gass typically devotes enormous attention to the construction of sentences, arguing their importance as the basis of his work. His prose has been described as flashy, difficult, edgy, masterful, inventive, and musical. Steven Moore, writing in The Washington Post has called Gass "the finest prose stylist in America." Much of Gass' work is metafictional.
Gass has received many awards and honors, including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1965, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1970. He won the Pushcart Prize awards in 1976, 1983, 1987, and 1992, and in 1994 he received the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literature of the Midwest. He has teaching awards from Purdue University and Washington University; in 1968 the Chicago Tribune Award as One of the Ten Best Teachers in the Big Ten. He was a Getty Foundation Fellow in 1991-1992. He received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997; and the American Book Award for The
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 10, 2019
Essentially a reread since I have on my shelves almost all the books represented here. Especially all the fiction, which I've read and reread--In the Heart of the Heart of the Country last year and The Tunnel a couple of years ago. One of the attractions of this volume is that is offers selections from volumes of essays now out of print, hard to get, and beyond my pocketbook. Another is that the selection for the Reader was made by Gass himself before he died in 2017. And a 3d is that probably everything Gass wrote is worth a revisit. He's one of those writers who can't become over-read or threadbare.
Having finished, I've been reminded again that the man could write like anything. I'm astonished at the power of his ideas and verbal gifts. Here in this generous selection from his fiction and essays one can see how richly his mastery of words and vaulting insight run through his sentences like veins of gold. He's in that group of 20th century writers I admire the most, one of those literary saints like Joyce, Gaddis, and Woolf who help form the foundations of the church where I read. If you haven't read William H. Gass, it's my opinion you should. Whatever you're reading now, you should put it down--throw it against the wall or gently slide it onto a shelf to return to later--and immediately read Gass. Do it now.
Having finished, I've been reminded again that the man could write like anything. I'm astonished at the power of his ideas and verbal gifts. Here in this generous selection from his fiction and essays one can see how richly his mastery of words and vaulting insight run through his sentences like veins of gold. He's in that group of 20th century writers I admire the most, one of those literary saints like Joyce, Gaddis, and Woolf who help form the foundations of the church where I read. If you haven't read William H. Gass, it's my opinion you should. Whatever you're reading now, you should put it down--throw it against the wall or gently slide it onto a shelf to return to later--and immediately read Gass. Do it now.
November 8, 2018
This deckle edged beauty landed in my mailbox earlier this week. It fills a lot of basic needs. You get his Temple of Texts essay among many others. The Pederson Kid is there from In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. There are bite sized sections of Middle C, The Tunnel and Omensetter's Luck. Emma Enters a Sentence of Elizabeth Bishop's is the standout chosen from Cartesian Sonata. It's a wonderful book. I just regret that Herr Gass wasn't around to see it in its final form.
November 7, 2018
My review appears in
New York Journal of Books
.
December 18, 2019
I don't know what to say...I will miss his searing intelligence, the serpentine sentences that are undoubtedly super confusing. The fiction is what first put me on to Gass, back when I was in high school, having my baby brain blown by the likes of "The Pederson Kid" and "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country." Reading Gass pretty much killed my enjoyment of DFW forever, as he immediately thereafter seemed like Diet Gass - the fiction, in particular, pales in comparison. But one should perhaps read this for The Essays, which are some of the best from his generation, along with Hardwick, Davenport, and Robinson. The only glaring omission is "On Being Blue"; luckily the NYRB has a cute little edition you can buy or get from your library to read and read again for the rest of your life. There's a Kabbalistic sensation to reading Gass, as if his sentences can be plucked off the page and made into objects; the non-fiction reads like fiction, and the fiction often read like essays. Ahead of his time, and, for the record, predicted our modern predicament to a T.
April 15, 2020
I have very little to say about this, but it would have felt like cheating myself and Mr. Gass to leave the review box empty after wrestling with this monster for over two years. Gass is, as ever, an astute and excellent critic, but I struggled with moving beyond the superficial veil of his section on individual artists, many of whom I'd never engaged with directly, only through the secondhand lens of Gass' eyes.
His fiction is the crux of his work. He is one of the greatest fictive mechanics there is.
His fiction is the crux of his work. He is one of the greatest fictive mechanics there is.
October 6, 2021
THE definitive master of the sentence. Nobody has ever written like him. I doubt anybody ever will.
November 13, 2024
Quite arguably the most intellectually nourishing collection of writing I own. William Gass is now my favorite author, and these pages hold many of the most challenging, tender and devastating worlds of prose.
September 15, 2025
Transformed my writing. Infinitely better than those popular writing books that regurgitate the same rigid rules.
December 27, 2024
"I am present in every disguise, every twist and transformation (Proteus, in changing, cannot escape his nature as a changeling); and if I write well enough and dispose my voices artfully, I can say anything; only then can one dare to speak the truth about one's self, off the couch and out of an office, onto an engraving. I can, in those conditions, lay my heart bare, as Baudelaire hoped to do, not merely because unburdening is a blessing, but because I want to be blessed as the Son was by the Father, blessed first by those books which are my friends and gave me my values and taught me how I ought to live, and then, perversely, by the world, precisely because I am the sort of total sinner who wants not just the tree but the tree toad..."
Want to read
December 10, 2023Don’t do readers as a rule, usually, but I just “stole” this from a “hotel” and I’ve been dipping in and out. What a fucking magician, man. From “On Reading to Oneself”:
“We've grown accustomed to the slum our consciousness has become. It tastes like the spit in our own mouth, not the spit from the mouth of another.”
Reason I don’t do readers is because I like to think I’m a completist, and I hate the idea of reading fiction excerpts, would rather read the whole thing.
So what I’ll probably do with this is read the non-fic, but then pick up the full texts of the fiction to complete it all. But who cares! Really!
“We've grown accustomed to the slum our consciousness has become. It tastes like the spit in our own mouth, not the spit from the mouth of another.”
Reason I don’t do readers is because I like to think I’m a completist, and I hate the idea of reading fiction excerpts, would rather read the whole thing.
So what I’ll probably do with this is read the non-fic, but then pick up the full texts of the fiction to complete it all. But who cares! Really!
December 27, 2018
I won this in a Goodreads Giveaway.
This is a collection of Stories. It's broken up into groups, first is the Introduction, Then Fiction, next Artists, and finally Theory. 900 pages later i'm not sure how I like it. Some were ok and others are not my cup of tea.
This is a collection of Stories. It's broken up into groups, first is the Introduction, Then Fiction, next Artists, and finally Theory. 900 pages later i'm not sure how I like it. Some were ok and others are not my cup of tea.
April 15, 2021
I can't believe I had to accidentally find out William Gass existed from a reference in a book that was a reference in another book that was better than the book my friend recommended, which it appeared in.
Read
June 25, 2019Super.
Read
July 5, 2019I didn't read this whole book but picked out what interested me. I do love it though -- library copy due back today. Favorites are the Stein and Rilke. His essay on the sentence is wonderful too.
April 25, 2020
Review forthcoming in Spectrum Culture.
Want to read
February 13, 2025813.5 Gas
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews