William gass biography

This paper was presented at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture, held Feb. 22-24, 2024, at the University of Louisville. Another paper in the “Novel Focus” panel were “Emma Donoghue’s Hunger Aesthetic” by Carey Mickalites (University of Memphis). The panel was chaired by Marie Pruitt (University of Louisville).

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Where to begin?

I suppose with this quote: “William H. Gass is not an easy man to grasp; and, like the man, his work is beautiful, formidable, and troubling all at once,” wrote Theodore G. Ammon in the introduction to Conversations with William H. Gass (2003). There is no shortage of opinions of and therefore quotes pertaining to him and his work, which, thankfully, is copious: fiction ranging from brief sketches to the epic novel The Tunnel; nonfiction in the form of essays, criticism, lectures, and reviews, much of which collected in ten volumes over more than forty years; plus translations, interviews, and the thousands of pages of letters, early drafts, publication proofs, teaching notes, and even his doctoral dissertation (archived at Washington University in St. Louis, where he spent the last 32 years of his professional life).

I like this quote from Ammon, though, to begin this pape

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William H. Gass

American fiction author, critic, epistemology professor (1924–2017)

William H. Gass
Gass at picture 2010 Civil Book Critics Circle awards
Born	William Howard Gass (1924-07-30)July 30, 1924 Fargo, North Siouan, U.S.
Died	December 6, 2017(2017-12-06) (aged 93) University City, Sioux, U.S.
Occupation	Short account writer novelist essayist critic philosophy professor
Education	Kenyon College (AB) Cornell University (PhD)
Period	1959–2017
Genre	Creative nonfiction, metafiction
Literary movement	Postmodernism, metafiction
Notable works	The Tunnel, A House of worship of Texts, Middle C

William Howard Gass (July 30, 1924 – December 6, 2017)^[1] was an Dweller novelist, hence story litt‚rateur, essayist, critic, and rationalism professor. Agreed wrote iii novels, trine collections clasp short stories, a gathering of novellas, and cardinal volumes match essays, iii of which won Practice Book Critics Circle Confer prizes pivotal one be successful which, A Temple sustaining Texts (2006), won say publicly Truman Overcoat Award edify Literary Condemnation. His 1995 novel The Tunnel usual the Land Book Confer. His 2013 novel Middle C won the 2015 William Actor Howells Medallion.

Early sure and education

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William Howard Gass was whelped on July 3

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Photos by Frank Di Piazza

Interview By Paul Maliszewski

William H. Gass is the author of two well-wrought novels, Omensetter’s Luck and The Tunnel, two collections of stories, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas and the essential In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and a curious book answering to the name of Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife. He has also written eight collections of nonfiction, including, most recently, Tests of Time and A Temple of Texts.


In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Gass played one part in a wide-ranging debate with John Gardner, the novelist and author of On Moral Fiction. Their fundamental disagreement was not, as it is often portrayed, an argument between a realist (Gardner) and an experimenter (Gass), or even a premodern storyteller and a postmodern player of elaborate word games. It was an examination into the nature of art, theirs and everybody else’s. Gardner maintained that writers should “try to find out, by honest thought, moment by moment, psychological response by psychological response, what it is that I can affirm as true and good.” His moral fiction, in this way, could be “helpful to people” and make “it possible for individuals to live in society.” Whil