/lit/ - Literature

>Some may seize on it as a postmodern masterpiece, but it is a bloated monster of a book. [...]

>The bloat is a consequence of sheer adipose verbosity and an unremitting condition of moral and intellectual flatulence. [...]

>The abjection of (Gass') hero seems less lived than written. It is an act of ventriloquism: behind the repulsive, potentially fascist narrator stands his critic, the novelist, presumably committed to humane, democratic values. But those values are nowhere intimated in the book, and what emerges is a kind of inadvertent complicity between author and protagonist. The supposedly critical novel becomes an enactment of bad faith

>>11389078
It is unironically this man. America's foremost prose stylist, the late William Gass. His book The Tunnel captures the cringe of /lit/ better than any green troll can.

does he have any short stories outside of heart of the heart of the country?

Redpill me on his theory

Press F to pay respects

What are the chances that a man named "Gass" would write books almost exclusively about flatulence?

>>9358976
hmm

>>9268949
You've been Gass'd

What does /lit/ think of William H. Gass?

>Wild eyes were another sign. It is something I have seldom seen — the expression of an ecstatic state — though much is foolishly written of them, as if they grew like Jerusalem artichokes along the road. The eyes are black, right enough, whatever their normal color is; they are black because their perception is condensed to a coal, because the touch and taste and perfume of the lover, the outcry of a dirty word, a welcome river, have been reduced in the heat of passion to a black ash, and this unburnt residue of oxidation, this calyx, replaces the pupil so it no longer receives but sends, and every hair is on end, though perhaps only outspread on a pillow, and the nostrils are flared, mouth agape, cheeks sucked so the whole face seems as squeezed as a juiced fruit; I know, for once Lou went into that wildness while we were absorbing one another, trying to kiss, not merely forcefully, not the skull of our skeleton, but the skull and all the bones on which the essential self is hung, kiss so the shape of the soul is stirred too, that's what is called the ultimate French, the furtherest fuck, when a cock makes a concept cry out and climax; I know, for more than once, though not often, I shuddered into that other region, when a mouth drew me through its generosity into the realm of unravel, and every sensation lay extended as a lake, every tie was loosed, and the glue of things dissolved. I knew I wore the wild look then. The greatest gift you can give another human being is to let them warm you till, in passing beyond pleasure, your defenses fall, your ego surrenders, its structure melts, its towers topple, lies, fancies, vanities, blow away in no wind, and you return, not to the clay you came from — the unfired vessel — but to the original moment of inspiration, when you were the unabbreviated breath of God.

Who are you trying to impress by reading your esoteric tomes?

Who is America's foremost prose stylist?

William GASS??? THBPTBPBTBPTBPT I'M FARTING ANON THBPTBPTBPT I'M FARTING OH MY WHABCHHHHHHHHHHHHH PSHHHHHHHHH

This guy is amazing. I thought he was a meme for so long.

>You will live longer and better by consuming deliciously chewy fats and reading Proust than by treadmilling to a Walkman tune and claiming to be educated because you peruse the Wall Street Journal and have recently skimmed something by Tom Wolfe.

>I was vexed and confused. The trip was beginning to seem tiresome and reckless, the cold was uncomfortable, the ride furious, and the result impalpable. And afterward--the cogitations of a sick man--if we did reach the indicated goal, it wasn't impossible that the centuries, annoyed at having their origin infringed upon, would squash me between their fingers, which must have been as age-old as they. While I was thinking along those lines we were gobbling up the road and the plain flew under our feet until the animal became fatigued and I was able to look more calmly at my surroundings. Only look: I saw nothing except the vast whiteness of the snow, which by now had invaded the sky itself, blue up till then. Here and there a plant or two might appear, huge and brutish, the broad leaves waving in the wind. The silence of that region was like a tomb. It could be said that the life of things had become stupidity for man.

>Had it fallen out of the air? Detached itself from the earth? I don't know. I do know that a huge shape, the figure of a woman, appeared to me then, staring at me with eyes that blazed like the sun. Everything about that figure had the vastness of wild forms and everything was beyond the comprehension of human gaze because the outlines were lost in the surroundings and what looked thick was often diaphanous. Stupefied, I didn't say a word, I couldn't even let out a cry, but after a time, which was brief, I asked who she was and what her name was: the curiosity of delirium.

>"Call me Nature or Pandora. I am your mother and your enemy."

Is he the best american writer we have?

>>7831321

>>7825393
Because Gass exists

>was Wittgenstein's protege
>has read between 15,000 and 20,000 books
>knows literally everything about literature and philosophy
>was friends with Gaddis and Hawkes
>is the author of the greatest work of fiction since Ulysses

>>7526260
>>7526263
>>7526272
This is not Gass. Please refrain from posting content not related to Gass.

>tfw unloved

Do you think it will take his passing for people to realize he is the greatest prose stylist of the twentieth-century's latter half?