"The most important work of fiction by an American in this literary generation." -The New Republic Now celebrating the 50th anniversary of its publication, Omensetter's Luck is the masterful first novel by the author of The Tunnel, Middle C, On Being Blue, andEyes: Novellas and Stories. Greeted as a masterpiece when it was first published in 1966, Omensetter's Luck is the quirky, impressionistic, and breathtakingly original story of an ordinary community galvanized by the presence of an extraordinary man. Set in a small Ohio town in the 1890s,...
"The most important work of fiction by an American in this literary generation." -The New Republic Now celebrating the 50th annivers...
In the words of the late Walker Percy, William Gass is a "totally committed, totally uncompromising, and extraordinarily gifted writer." His latest work is a suite of four novellas that explore Mind, Matter, and God.In the title story, God is a writer in a constant state of fumble, Mind is a housewife cum modern-day Cassandra, and Matter is--who else?--the helpless and confused husband of Mind. In "Bed and Breakfast," the concept of salvation is explored through material possessions--a collection of kitsch--as a traveling businessman is slowly swamped by the sheer surfeit of matter in a small...
In the words of the late Walker Percy, William Gass is a "totally committed, totally uncompromising, and extraordinarily gifted writer." His latest wo...
The greatly esteemed essayist, novelist, and philosopher reflects on the art of translation and on rainer maria rilke's duino elegies-and gives us his own translation of Rilke's masterwork.
The greatly esteemed essayist, novelist, and philosopher reflects on the art of translation and on rainer maria rilke's duino elegies-and gives us his...
"Gass's commitment to ideas, concentrated energy and originality shine through on every page. . . . Ezra Pound as a failed modernist; the lives of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein . . . the avant garde . . . the demands of autobiography; the Pulitzer Prize Committee's . . . choices in fiction . . . flecked with fertile insights and a pleasure to read".--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review. A 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award winner.
"Gass's commitment to ideas, concentrated energy and originality shine through on every page. . . . Ezra Pound as a failed modernist; the lives of Nie...
A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, "At Swim-Two-Birds" is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish college student who lives with his curmudgeonly uncle in Dublin. When not in bed (where he seems to spend most of his time) or reading he is composing a mischief-filled novel about Dermot Trellis, a second-rate author whose characters ultimately rebel against him and seek vengeance. From drugging him as he sleeps to dropping the ceiling on his head, these figures of Irish myth make Trellis pay dearly for his bad writing. Hilariously funny and inventive, "At...
A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, "At Swim-Two-Birds" is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish college stude...
Conversations with William H. Gass captures the imagination and philosophical acumen of one of America's most important aestheticians, critical theorists, fiction writers, and essayists.
From his first major novel, Omensetter's Luck (1966), to his numerous collections of essays and philosophical inquiries, to his controversial novel The Tunnel (1995), Gass (b. 1924) has proved himself a meticulous craftsman. Throughout these interviews, he reveals an aesthetic that combines ideas from sources as disparate as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gertrude Stein,...
Conversations with William H. Gass captures the imagination and philosophical acumen of one of America's most important aestheticians, criti...
On Being Blue is a book about everything blue--sex and sleaze and sadness, among other things--and about everything else. It brings us the world in a word as only William H. Gass, among contemporary American writers, can do. Gass writes: Of the colors, blue and green have the greatest emotional range. Sad reds and melancholy yellows are difficult to turn up. Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, overhead and inside caves, covering fruit and oozing out of clay. Although green enlivens the earth and mixes...
On Being Blue is a book about everything blue--sex and sleaze and sadness, among other things--and about everything else. It brings us the worl...
First published in 1968, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country established William Gass as one of America's finest and boldest writers of fiction, and nearly fifty years later, the book still stands as a landmark of contemporary fiction. The two novellas and three short stories it contains are all set in the Midwest, and together they offer a mythical reimagining of America's heartland, with its punishing extremes of heat and cold, its endless spaces and claustrophobic households, its hidden and baffled desires, its lurking threat of violence. Exploring and expanding the limits...
First published in 1968, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country established William Gass as one of America's finest and boldest writers of...
