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William H. Gass
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Cartesian Sonataby William H. GassISBN 0465026206 (0-465-02620-6)
Softcover, Basic Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cartesian Sonata'Book summary:Reading William H. Gass's fiction is a little like looking at oneself in a fractured mirror: the usual components are all there, but not necessarily in the right places. Take, for example, the title novella of Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas: here Gass introduces us to Ella Bend, a sensitive clairvoyant married to a rather burdensome husband. But no sooner does Gass get us started with a very conventional opening, ("This is the story of Ella Bend Hess, of how she became clairvoyant and what she was able to see") than he injects himself into it ("Her gift was the gift of the gods & inexplicable and merciless. Marvelous is what I mean. Miraculous. Mysterious? Surely not a word so weak. Yet it has to begin with an m"). It isn't long before Ella becomes a bit player in her own story, the starring role having been appropriated by artful digressions, dizzying streams of consciousness, and Gass's own formidable wordsmithing talents.
The other three novellas in this collection are equally high-concept: a traveling salesman falls in love with his hotel room and refuses to leave; an aging spinster literally loses herself in a line from an Elizabeth Bishop poem; a young boy inexplicably decides to live for revenge. The plots, such as they are, are offbeat enough to catch the interest--what holds it, however, is Gass at play in the fields of the word. Cartesian Sonata will not be to every reader's taste--those who are impatient with absurdity, non sequiturs, and pages and pages of verbal pyrotechnics may want to steer toward more conventional literature. Those who like their fiction liberally laced with equal measures of philosophy and anarchy, however, should give William H. Gass a try. [via]
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The Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellasby William H. GassISBN 0375401687 (0-375-40168-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Experiencing Scienceby William H. GassISBN 0465021859 (0-465-02185-9)
Hardcover, Perseus Books Group
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Horses: Photographsby William H. GassISBN 0375414681 (0-375-41468-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Horses: Photographs'Book summary:More than a hundred extraordinary portraitslush, rich, textured, sculpturalthat reveal the spirit and nobility of the horse. Portraits of horses gazing at the camera, standing in the golden light, stamping away flies, galloping, bucking, rolling in the dust.
They are the work of Michael Eastman, a self-taught photographer influenced by Edward Weston, Walker Evans, and Henry Moore, who spent thirty years capturing the essential nature of subjects that range from Cuban life to landscapes to architecture in many places. Now he turns his refined eye to the magnificent horse.
Eastman has caught the animals complexity and power, fear and courage, goodness, masculinity, femininity, uniqueness.
All animals are wonderful, says Eastman, but horses are truly mythic. [via]More editions of Horses: Photographs:
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and Other Storiesby William H. GassISBN 0224615912 (0-224-61591-2)
Hardcover, Random House
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The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Briggeby William H. GassISBN 0394716574 (0-394-71657-4)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge'Book summary:First published in Paris in 1910, Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is one the first great modernist novels, the account of poet-aspirant Brigge in his exploration of poetic individuality and his reflections on the experience of time as death approaches. This new translation by Burton Pike is a reaction to overly stylized previous translations, and aims to capture not only the beauty but also the strangeness, the spirit, of Rilke's German. [via]
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Omensetter's Luckby William H. GassISBN 0141180102 (0-14-118010-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Omensetter's Luck'Book summary: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, it chronicles - through the voices of various participants and observers - the confrontation between Brackett Omensetter, a man of preternatural goodness, and the Reverend Jethro Furber, a preacher crazed with a propensity for violent thoughts. Omensetter's Luck meticulously brings to life a specific time and place as it illuminates timeless questions about life, love, good, and evil. [via]
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Praise of Follyby William H. GassISBN 0300097344 (0-300-09734-4)
Softcover, Yale Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Praise of Folly'Book summary:First published in Paris in 1511, "The Praise of Folly" has enjoyed enormous and highly controversial success from the author's lifetime down to our own day. "The Folly" has no rival, except perhaps Thomas More's "Utopia", as the most intense and lively presentation of the literary, social and theological aims and methods of Northern Humanism. Clarence H. Miller's translation of "The Praise of Folly", based on the definitive Latin text, seeks to echo Erasmus' own lively style while retaining the nuances of the original text. In his introduction, Miller places the work in the context of Erasmus as humanist and theologian. In the afterword, William H. Gass playfully considers the meaning, or meanings, of folly and offers fresh insights into one of the great books of Western literature. [via]
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Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translationby William H. GassISBN 0465026222 (0-465-02622-2)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group
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The Recognitionsby William H. GassISBN 0140187081 (0-14-018708-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Recognitions'Book summary:Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate 'originals' - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize. Contemporary life collapses the distinction between the 'real' and the 'virtual' world, and Gaddis' novel pre-empts our common obsessions by almost half a century. This novel tackles the blurring of perceptual boundaries, The Matrix and Bladerunner pale in comparison to this epic novel. [via]
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A Temple of Textsby William H. GassISBN 0307262863 (0-307-26286-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Temple of Texts'Book summary:From one of the most admired essayists and novelists at work today: a new collection of essayshis first since Tests of Time, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
These twenty-five essays speak to the nature and value of writing and to the books that result from a deep commitment to the word. Here is Gass on Rilke and Gertrude Stein; on friends such as Stanley Elkin, Robert Coover, and William Gaddis; and on a company of healthy dissidents, among them Rabelais, Elias Canetti, John Hawkes, and Gabriel García Márquez.
In the title essay, Gass offers an annotated list of the fifty books that have most influenced his thinking and his work and writes about his first reaction to reading each. Among the books: Ludwig Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ( A lightning bolt, Gass writes. Philosophy was not dead after all. Philosophical ambitions were not extinguished. Philosophical beauty had not fled prose. ) . . . Ben Jonsons The Alchemist ( A man after my own heart. He is capable of the simplest lyrical stroke, as bold and direct as a line by Matisse, but he can be complex in a manner that could cast Nabokov in the shade . . . Shakespeare may have been smarter, but he did not know as much. ) . . . Gustave Flauberts letters ( Here I learnedand learnedand learned. ) And after reading Malorys Le Morte dArthur, Gass writes I began to eat books like an alien worm.
In the concluding essay, Evil, Gass enlarges upon the themes of artistic quality and cultural values that are central to the books he has considered, many of which seek to reveal the worst in people while admiring what they do best.
As Gass writes, The true alchemists do not change lead into gold, they change the world into words.
A Temple of Texts is Gass at his most alchemical. [via]More editions of A Temple of Texts:
Tests of Time: Essaysby William H. GassISBN 0226284069 (0-226-28406-9)
Softcover, Univ of Chicago Pr
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The Tunnelby William H. GassISBN 0060976861 (0-06-097686-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Willie Masters' Lonesome Wifeby William H. GassISBN 0394472454 (0-394-47245-4)
Hardcover, Knopf
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The World Within the Wordby William H. GassISBN 0465026257 (0-465-02625-7)
Softcover, Basic Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The World Within the Word'Book summary:In this sequel to Fiction & the Figures of Life, one of America's most brilliant and eclectic minds examines literature, culture, writers (their lives and works), and the nature and uses of language and the written word. Included are discussions of Valéry, Henry Miller, Sartre, Freud, Faulkner, suicide, "art and order," and the transformation of language into poetry and fiction. The vividness and clarity of Gass's writing, the unabashed love and inimitable use of language-his startling metaphors, the sinuousness of his philosophy, the originality of his vision-make each essay a searching revelation of its subject, as well as an example of Gass's own singular artistry.[via]More editions of The World Within the Word:
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