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Featured Author: William H. Gass
With News and Reviews From the Archives of The New York Times
In This FeatureReviews of William H. Gass's Earlier Books Book Excerpts and Essays By William H. Gass Related Links
James Wood Reviews 'Cartesian Sonata' (November 1, 1998)
REVIEWS OF WILLIAM H. GASS'S EARLIER BOOKS:
Joyce Ravid/ KnopfWilliam H. Gass 'Omensetter's Luck' (1966)
"For his first novel William H. Gass couldn't have chosen a less fashionable setting. And he couldn't have been more oddly successful because -- not in spite -- of it."
'In the Heart of the Heart of the Country: And Other Stories' (1968)
". . . this collection defines Gass not as a special but as a major voice. . . . Gass is, in fact, a virtuoso with homely textures. . . . He takes his bumpkins and dullards, his frumps, crones and boors and ignites them, casually, into tragedy . . ."
'Fiction and the Figures of Life' (1971)
"The reviews, articles and esthetic meditations which appear in 'Fiction and the Figures of Life' are, in their own way, edifying, theoretical and perhaps even trend-setting. But what should be said first is that they are by a man who loves words more than theories."
'Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife' (1971)
"[T]he novella is strained to breaking point -- lovely prose poem as some of it writes itself to be -- and the whole concept bears its burden with less patience than the heroine bears her lovers."
'On Being Blue' (1976)
". . . an enchanting book. . . . a meditation on life and art, and the way our reactions are shaped at the meeting-point between them."
'The World Within the Word' (1978)
"I reveled in it, every last vivid, golden-tongued, wrong-headed word of it. . . . [But] I don't think his theory of fiction, strictly considered, amounts to much."
'Habitations of the Word: Essays' (1985)
"William H. Gass is not alone among leading American fiction writers in giving some of his time and talent to nonfiction, but nobody does it more energetically."
'The Tunnel' (1995)
". . . maddening, enthralling, appalling, coarse, romantic, sprawling, bawling. . . . It is not a nice book. It will have enemies . . ."
'Finding a Form: Essays' (1997)
"I admire Mr. Gass's play of mind and serious meditations, even his will, though often I disbelieve him. . . . Against the odds, William Gass, a tortured man in the attic, has empowered himself to write scripture in an unredemptive time."Prizes, Surprises and Consolation Prizes (May 5, 1985)
In this depreciation of literary awards, Gass writes, "The Pulitzer Prize in fiction takes dead aim at mediocrity and almost never misses."
East vs. West in Lithuania: Rising Tempers at a Writers' Meeting (February 2, 1986)
Gass describes a Soviet-American exchange between academics and writers that he attended. Across the divide of the cold war, much was lost in translation.
William H. Gass Reviews Philip Roth's 'The Counterlife' (January 4, 1987)
"In 'The Counterlife,' [Roth's recurrent] query has become more riddling, more radical and, despite the antic flipflops of the plot, more serious yet no less witty for all that: can a Jew, if he wishes -- if he wants -- change into a Jew?"
A Failing Grade for the Present Tense (October 11, 1987)
"Why do I warn you about the perils of the present tense? Because there is a lot of it going around. What was once a rather rare disease has become an epidemic."
First Chapter: 'Cartesian Sonata' (1998)
An excerpt from Gass's book of novellas.
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