rip William H. Gass

good list

I will try and dig out my copy at some point (not now - I have done too much digging out already and my flat is now stressing me out) and post some of the choice blurbs

please, though i think i should just buy temple of texts

Found an extract:

https://lithub.com/william-gass-on-12-of-the-most-important-books-in-his-life/

Very good list. Should be Eupalinos btw – I wonder if the misspelling is Gass's or not.

It isn’t (I found my copy)

Re “not a single Italian” https://i.imgur.com/2rgNXvL.jpg

(He does this a couple of times, using the blurb to essentially put a whole seam of literature in one slot)

A long time ago I used go through essays by Gass (and Eliot Weinberger) just collecting the names of authors and books to check out. A lot of these were on my list.

Thanks wins - don't really consider Svevo Italian in my head because he was from Trieste (more Austria-Hungary).

Loving his writing about his reading, but that last bit was a reminder not to take even your coolest professors too much at their word, guidance-wise. Mann could deploy a lighter touch than in Gass's impression: for inst, in Man and Dog and The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man---but maybe Gass hadn't read those? Can't read 'em all, and he was a busy man.

gass was a busy man and could not read all manns incl. man and dog and confidence man

Mann bites dog

i just read omensetter's luck and was sortof shocked by how gentle it was, i read the pederson kid during a really bad patch where i couldn't sleep or leave the house and it was increadibly gruelling but i loved its wickedness. omensetters luck bared its fangs but then ultimately was far more gentle about 'life and the human spirit' than i'd hoped. amazing prose stylist though, i'm not sure about getting into middle c/the tunnel etc, i suspect i might get bored midway and i'm worried there's a lot of people talking about art in a mid-sized university humanities professor sort of way. prefer the pettiness of gaddis, but he never really lights you on fire like the best bits of the gass i've read, maybe i should be more generous.