"The only problem - if we can call it that - with this collection of critique, biography, and philosophy is that the professor is frequently operating at depths nearly inaccessible to the rest of us mortals."
-- Il'ja Rákoš, Amazon Reviewer
As usual I have too many books going at once. The stack to the right of my easy chair here has That Hideous Strength (C.S. Lewis) on top of the pile because I am trying to finish it. Below that are two thin volumes on journalism and How to Control the Military by John Kenneth Galbraith, both of which I have finished this month but not returned to my shelves because I want to write something about them. Beneath that is Russell Brand's Mentors, of which I read the audiobook in February and bought this little hardback volume in order to read it again.
Evan Hughes' Literary Brooklyn is below that, as a book to dip into when I need something different. The rest of the pile includes Graham Greene's Ways of Escape, Bob Hoffman's Advertising for Skeptics, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and P.M. Forni's The Thinking Life. This latter is a library book, so I will have to return it someday.... when the public library opens its doors again.
Winner of the 2007 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, "A Temple of Texts" is the latest critical collection from one of America's greatest essayists and novelists. Here, William H. Gass pays homage to the readerly side of the literary experience by turning his critical sensibility upon all the books that shaped his own development as a reader, writer, and human being. With essays on figures ranging from William Shakespeare and Gertrude Stein to Flann O'Brien and Robert Burton, Gass creates a "temple" of readerly devotion, a collection of critical explorations as brilliant and incisive as readers have come to expect from this literary master, but also a surprisingly personal window into the author's own literary development.
From the NY Times' William Gass Obituary
He used ordinary words to great effect, as when he described a character as having “a dab of the dizzies,” but it was his metaphors (which he said came to him in “squadrons”), his rhythms and the effort he put into each sentence that made him the object of other writers’ admiration.
Mr. Gass was widely credited with coining the term “metafiction” to describe writing in which the author is part of the story. He himself was one of the form’s foremost practitioners.
Excerpt from a Paris Review interview, 1976:
INTERVIEWER
Have you spent a good part of your writing life getting even?
GASS
Yes . . . yes. Getting even is one great reason for writing.
-- Il'ja Rákoš, Amazon Reviewer
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| William H. Gass. Creative Commons |
Evan Hughes' Literary Brooklyn is below that, as a book to dip into when I need something different. The rest of the pile includes Graham Greene's Ways of Escape, Bob Hoffman's Advertising for Skeptics, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and P.M. Forni's The Thinking Life. This latter is a library book, so I will have to return it someday.... when the public library opens its doors again.
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The purpose of this blog post is to introduce readers to William H. Gass. I was familiar with him only because of the essays of his which appeared occasionally in Harper's Magazine. Here's a description of the book I borrowed from the library to write about.
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From the NY Times' William Gass Obituary
He used ordinary words to great effect, as when he described a character as having “a dab of the dizzies,” but it was his metaphors (which he said came to him in “squadrons”), his rhythms and the effort he put into each sentence that made him the object of other writers’ admiration.
Mr. Gass was widely credited with coining the term “metafiction” to describe writing in which the author is part of the story. He himself was one of the form’s foremost practitioners.
* * * *
INTERVIEWER
Have you spent a good part of your writing life getting even?
GASS
Yes . . . yes. Getting even is one great reason for writing.
* * * *
As indicated above, I am simply making an introduction here. Please go read my Medium story The Erudite William H. Gass: A Writer of High Degree
