reflections habitations recognitions philosophical

books:

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories (Nonpareil Books, #21)

5 reviews
William H. Gass

David R Godine, 2005

Please Keep Early Gass in Print, Vote 2
Early William H. Gass is essential. This fairly straightforward book is early Gass. Gass after Omensetter is a very personal taste. Fame, even the tiny minor academic variety, infects human beings oddly. Gass only had a few stories to tell. This book matters. Please keep the great early Gass alive/available & do not worry much about the later still quite interesting but arrogant blatting.

A Temple of Texts

1 review
William H. Gass

Dalkey Archive Pr, 2007

Twice-removed tales: mandarin lit crit in the high style
This collects introductions to new editions of literary works, musings on books and ideas, and a variety of book reviews, some brief, some-- as with that of Susan Neiman's philosophical study of evil, extended. The high style Gass favors, and which the Washington Post's Michael Dirnda pours/pores over, does demand concentration. It will reward effort, but the amounts of inspiration that I gained ...

Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation

12 reviews
William H. Gass

Basic Books, 2000

The place to start if you want to read Rilke
It may seem odd that a book about translating Rainer Maria Rilke would be a good place to start encountering the poet. But Rilke is not only a brilliant poet, one of the greatest of the twentieth century, he is also difficult to approach. I read him on and off for ten years before I could see beyond what I thought was pretentious esthetic posturing. (Now, like so many others, I see Rilke as ...

The Recognitions (Penguin Classics)

41 reviews
William Gaddis

Penguin Classics, 1993

I Love It, But I'm Strange
Why in the world should anyone trouble to read so difficult a novel? A novel, for pete's sake, not even a work of non-fiction with useful information. Don't we read novels for entertaining? But it turns out that hard work has its rewards. If you are one of the lucky ones, the book is enthralling. For the unlucky majority it will be just boring. Gaddis's obscurity does not come from an ...

Omensetter's Luck (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

12 reviews
William H. Gass

Penguin Classics, 1997

My favorite novel, bar none.
Omensetter's Luck has been a treasured, special book for me since I first read it many years ago.My copy is battered from several readings and dippings over time and the fact it once was drenched by an incoming tide and covered in sand as I lay on a beach in Mexico but I will never part with it. Reading this beautiful novel you become swamped and overwhelmed by a magical language world. I'd like ...

On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry

10 reviews
William H. Gass

David R. Godine Publisher, 1991

Keep At It
If I am any sort of example, you will not be sure what this book is about, until you're through. Keep at it. On the way, it's one of the most wondrous pieces of writing I've encountered. When you're there, if I am any sort of example, you will weep (for the joy of affirmation, mostly) and start again.

Vanishing America: The End of Main Street Diners, Drive-Ins, Donut Shops, and Other Everyday Monuments

5 reviews
Michael Eastman, William H. Gass

Rizzoli, 2008

Catch 'em while you can
The subtitle to this fascinating book is The End of Main Street and Michael Eastman has taken it upon himself to record as much of it as possible before progress or neglect flattens what's left. Flick through the pages and you'll see more than two hundred shots of small town commonplace. The five chapters (Theaters, Churches, Hangouts, Doors, Signs, Stores, Services, Autos, Hotels and ...

The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York Review Books Classics)

22 reviews
Robert Burton

NYRB Classics, 2001

Vivisect your mind
Where to begin discussing this book? How about again and again? For it begs never to be put down, and if finished (as if that's even possible) to be picked up again and pored over. Again. And again. And again . . . It got Samuel Jonson out of bed earlier than he wished. It kept me up later than I wished, and still "reading" it in my mind over and over again, musing on the insanity of it - the ...

Nickel Mountain

11 reviews
John Gardner

New Directions, 2007

You can tell a literary great...
Seems you can tell a literary masterpiece by its LACK of mainstream pop culture reviews. Only 7 reviews for such a great piece of work? (that tells more about the readers, not the author) Like another reviewer, my worthy reading experience with Art of Fiction led me to read Gardner's earlier works. In some places he fulfills his own advice by writing NOT in an absolute vacuum of "novel rules" but ...

The Tunnel

20 reviews
William H. Gass

Dalkey Archive Pr, 2007

A Story For The Ages
As my first introduction to Gass, I found The Tunnel to be slightly daunting, but as the story kept unfolding, I found myself being more and more enraptured by the novel. The wordplay, the asides, I could not restrain myself from continuing to read the novel. The novel never moved slow since aspects of Kohler were being developed over the whole thing. A short summary: This is a book about a ...

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: A Novel

16 reviews
Rainer Maria Rilke

Vintage, 1985

An intellectual goldmine...
This proto-existentialist novel features a main character (Malte) that is frightened by the possibility of faceless-ness; that is, he is terrified by the collapse of a coherent subject/identity in modernity. This work is highly critical of the traditional narrative where everything occurs in a logical and temporal order that is coherent and teleological. Through the character of Malte, Rilke ...

Finding a Form: Essays

2 reviews
William H. Gass

Cornell University Press, 1997

The Music of Gass
For anyone tired with the last fifteen years of "hip" postmodernism, this is an inspiring collection of darkly comic and seriously focussed essays ranging from the dillema of language and meaning to the innanity of literary prizes (which is especially juicy and hostile due to the fact that Gass, in the ranks of Pynchon, Gaddis, Reed, Coover and Ashberry, has never won one). Gass's prose cranks ...

Auguste Rodin

1 review
Rainer Maria Rilke

Archipelago Books, 2004

"All right, Ben. Attend me."
"Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to ...

Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

2 reviews
William H. Gass

Dalkey Archive Press, 1999

This book changed the way I look at a coffee table.
This book changed the way I look at a coffee table. It changed the way I look at fonts. It must be read, browsed and left out for others to browse. Leave it in the bathroom and see what happens. You will learn much about your guests as they sit on the pot

Cartesian Sonata And Other Novellas

3 reviews
William H. Gass

Basic Books, 2000

Stunning realization of the Cartesian halves.
A stunning realization of the Cartesian halves: the mind (on the one side); the flesh (on the other). All of the Gassian exploration of the marrow of language, metaphor and the life of lyricism is here. But so is his visceral presentation of the flesh, bones and fragile surfaces of the body of one Ella Bend. With the halves (thinking; therefore, being) folding and unfolding into and away from ...

Tests of Time: Essays

6 reviews
William H. Gass

University Of Chicago Press, 2003

Essential collection from a master essayist
Although addicted to alliteration, Gass is great once he gets going. This collection boasts a plethora of provocative (and sometimes very funny) thoughts, along with prose so great you'll want to telephone friends in the middle of the night and read it aloud to them. Of special note are "The Writer and Politics: A Litany", which is just that, a VERY long list of writers' experiences with ...

The Franchiser: A Novel (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

2 reviews
Stanley Elkin

Dalkey Archive Press, 2001

This is the most accurate Bicentennial picture of America.
You won't come acoss a more side-splittingly funny portrait of America in 1976 than what Elkin gives us here. I don't know which is the more: the humor in America that is depressing or the depression that is humorous; in any event, the book is a must for anyone who likes his or her humor bitersweet, his or her prose lush, and his or her mind to be stimulated and entertained!

The World Within the Word: Essays

2 reviews
William H. Gass

Basic Books, 2000

O I have sailed the seas and come to B . . .
At his best, Gass reminds me of Montaigne. While the latter spent much of his time ruminating about Self, Gass essays his verbal prowess to inhabit Word--the logos made flesh. The later Wittgenstein also comes to mind. His seminal short story, "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country," was a tour de force, a literary work which bowled me over with its virtuosity with language. His essays, ...

Fiction and the Figures of Life

1 review
William H. Gass

David R Godine, 1978

fiction and the figures of life
This is a supurb collection of essays by one of the very few American philosophers who can write well. Gass combines a penetrating insight into the human condition, an awareness of genuine philosophical difficulties, and a grasp of the way words should be used. He is a true wordsmith who has something important to say. I recommend this book highly.

The Habitations of the Word: Essays
William H. Gass

Simon & Schuster, 1985

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, 1985 Now a Cornell Paperback-- "These twelve essays take risks, make connections, give off sparks and illustrate Gass's love of language. Using Freudian concepts, he compares the art of writing to the art of becoming civilized: writing parallels the transformation of raw instinct into shared expression. . . . Gass writes with impassioned concern."--Publishers Weekly ...

search for books
habitations, philosophical, recognitions, reflections, twentieth-century

Impressum / about us