/wgg/ - William Gass General

Where do I start with Willy G? Do I jump straight into The Tunnel? Also:
>William Gass general

>Do I jump straight into The Tunnel?
I mean, I don't recommend it, since, if you are anything like the other anons here, it will probably ruin Gass completely for you, which would be pretty tragic; instead, start with Omensetter's Luck--Wallace's favorite--or In the Heart of the Heart of the Country--my favorite, not counting The Tunnel: they will let you get an idea of Gass' style without totally overwhelming you, and an idea of his ideas without totally boring you.

ASS

what if i hate everything wallace ever wrote, what then

That doesn't mean you should let that influence your opinion of Gass before reading him, especially because they are nothing alike, as people and as authors.

Bump

The older I get, the more I dislike Wallace, but I will admit he had excellent taste.

Start with In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, as another user said here.

Short stories then bigger works, maybe even OL before The Tunnel

What about Cartesian sonata

>tfw picked up In the Heart of the Heart of the country for 5 bucks recently

IM READY

>The slow fall of ash far from the flame, a residue of rain on morning grass, snow still in air, wounds we have had, dust on the sill there, dew, snowflake, scab: light, linger, leave, like a swatted fly, trace to be grieved, dot where it died.

Damn...

Cartesian Sonata is very good, but I wouldn't read it first: as Michael Silverblatt mentions in an interview with Gass, many of the sections in it are similar to sections in his other books, but they are more watered down, and you won't understand where they are or why they are like that unless you read his other books.

Damn i got it from a used book sale and was gonna read it. I guess I'll save it for a bit.

Gassposter, if you're going to recruit, by all means copypasta exemplar quotes, the ones that speak for themselves.

>Every day he thought would last forever, and the night forever, and the dawn drag eternally another long and empty day to light forever; yet they sped away, the day, the night clicked past as he walked by the creek by the hornbeam tree, the elders, the sorrels, cedars and the fir; for he had named them, sounding the soft names in his lonely skull, the fire of fall was on them, and he named the days he'd lost. It was still sorrowful to die. Eternity, for them, had ended.

Post some of your favorite Gass passages, Gassposters.

I'm a little busy right now, but I'll post some when I can.

I'll be waiting! :)

Wolfe quoters definitely encouraged me to extol him on Veeky Forums in spite of his hooligan apparitors.

Gassages, if you will

Damn where is this from?

Not in a position where I can get to all of my books, but I have a pdf of The Tunnel, so that's where all the gassages will come.

i will never read anything by this man based on this picture alone.

Omensetter's Luck

He wasn't always so rolypoly, you know.

Hot damn, I would do junior Gass.

>With a thunderous crack, her drawers were soiled. A soft sweet aroma filled the air warmly as her stink percolated through her cotton panties. His nose savoured every sniff, his mouth, every gulp.

What a fucking freak.

William 'Out from my ass comes a miasma of' Gass

I like it, sounds like ramblings of a crazy man

I mean, to an extent, that's what The Tunnel is.

Sounds like something I'd enjoy. Will probably read in 2018.

i really enjoyed in the heart of the heart of the country
i've been meaning to start the tunnel but i'm never in the mood

>spread your cheeks my dear, of that ursine rump. Open that passage from whence come your foul dumps. Give me the gass, give me a reason to pass, into the warm and welcoming dream of you hirsute and pale ass.

>“You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole.”

>“I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.”

The Tunnel - Page 55. - William Gass.

That's a ways a way, but hey--it's not like it's going to sprout legs and leave you.

holy shit. I don't know own why I'm laughing so hard. miasma kek

Academics can't write

Yeah, I have a huge backlog and I want to read one or both of his other books recommended in this thread first.
Like you said, it isn't going anywhere and none of my friends read to spoil it for me.

How about you actually finish one of his novels before you say stupid shit about him.

I wish I had friends who read. I lent my copy of The Lime Twig to one almost 4 months ago, and he hasn't read a page of it.

Did he learn how to write from Gertrude Stein?

Another nice little passage of Gass

He was very influenced by her writing, yeah, but he is very much his own man when it comes to his own writing. I should have mentioned that that is the only section in the novel written like that.

I started with On Being Blue which I sort of understood. It seemed too big a goal for an author of his calibre. I think he failed in achieving the effect he was going for, and the only thing that can redeem this book is if you actually study philosophy and try to read supplementary material along with the book.

It completely ruined Gass for me. I might just pick up ItHotHotC since it's short but you never know...

He was (RIP) too smart to write good fiction. Everyone in the world seems to know this except the Gassposter.

Gassposters please leave

I loved the autism of writing down lists. For that reason at least I could see it to the end.

This is great, thanks! :)

Valid criticism, I'm just getting started on Gass, but I'd say that his style of criticism is lateral to what is generally expected, but not by those means outside of good literature.

You go back to /b/ first.

Four things: one--until you read all of his fiction, you should not be making any statements about it; two--the idea that one can be too smart to write a work of significance is not only incredibly dumb, but also historically false (Goethe is a good example); three--other than on Veeky Forums--a place for people who don't read books to talk about books they haven't read (like you are doing)--Gass is widely regarded as one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century; four--and this is the most obvious one--what's not good to you may be good to another person, because that's, like, your opinion, man. I hope you refrain from posting similar discourse killers in the future: it's a waste of both of our time.

To him, fiction is nothing more than words on a page. He never departs from that dogma. Stuffy, calculated, dry, over-thought. Nothing transcends, his characters have no life, his stories no humor, no sadness, no feeling. It's not enough. Literature is a medium where art happens, where it is made possible: the epiphanic bits, images, scenes, lines, and moments. narrative is what makes it possible. The story, the book itself taken as a whole is not the art. He never understood this, that his entire project was stillborn. Sad.

Also RIP. Another great literary critic and teacher gone. Wish I could mourn his art but I've been mourning it the whole time.

This post is so wrong and bizarre that I honestly don't even want to argue with it. It even feels like you put effort into it, which makes it all the more saddening. Please don't post anymore.

>his stories no humor
>Billy Butter has a lover; with no hands he lies above her, fucking lightly as a plover, first his sister, then her mother. Here's Ben. There ain't no law in the Redeemer's church against a good fuck, is there Furber? Why of course not, Luther, only it's got to be your wife, and beyond five inches it's a sin to enjoy it. By christ you're a good sport, Furb. By christ you are. Pat. Hey boys, ain't Furb a good sport? Squeeze. By christ. You can play at our picnic. Rum a dum. Rum a dum. Rum a dum dum.

>apparitors
What is this wolfespeak?

Are you Gassposter? I'll be your friend. Haven't read a word of Gass's, though. I've read The Lime Twig and feel in love with it, that must count for something. I'm in the process of Starting with the Greeks(TM) these weeks. Here's to hoping I don't die before I get to the New Meme Trilogy(TM). And to Hawkes. And to Markson. And to Theroux. And to DeLillo.

How far through the Greeks are you?

Yes. And good luck on doing things right. I most certainly did not.

The recent spike in attention he's been getting is only in response to the realization that he's 91 and about to die, and less to do with the quality of his works.

I hope you don't sincerely believe that, because he's been old a long time, and only in the past couple months has he gained popularity.

>only in the past couple months has he gained popularity

Because people in the past couple months realized he's going to die soon.

Again, he's been old for longer than either of us have been alive. And do you really think that the people here give two shits about the fact that someone has wrinkles on their wrinkles?

Nah, that's just gay. Gass reaches all the bullshit you're talking about in The Tunnel at moments (which is still good enough to make him good), a lot of it seems like cynical meaningless trash, yeah, but the chapters like "Scandal in the Schoolroom" and "On Being a Bigot", he seems to reach these peaks of petty bitterness and rage and cynicism that are almost awe-inspiring to read.

Jeez, when Planmantee insults Culp and makes Culp wordlessly walk out and slam the door, then Kohler starts ranting and Planmantee and then Governali eventually silently get up and leave in the middle of it, and then just Herschel is left, having pissed his pants.... that's good art right there, bro.

Not to mention the fact that Koh keeps ranting after they've gone, senilely, defiantly, almost mock-heroically, talking to himself while poor incontinent Hershey sits there pissing himself...

These. And chapters like "Do Rivers," and "The First Winter of My Married Life" redeem every page of pure cynicism and negativity in the book, every one of which is still pretty good, by the way.

bump

Thanks a lot for the encouragement. I'm reading Fagles's introduction to the Orestia (after having read the plays), then I'm on to Sophocles for the Theban trilogy because I want a bit of variety and I want to get the basics under my belt first, then probably back for the rest of Aeschylus's plays because I love this. Or do you think I should read Seven Against Thebes before the Oedipus plays, being about Thebes and all? Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread too much.