Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It seems impossible that a collection of stories as ground breaking as these could disappear from the bookshelves, but here it is. I came on to find out about ordering a copy but found the publisher was out! Then let me say, having read it a few times already that while In the Heart of the Heart of the Country gets and deserves much praise in this collection, The Pederson Kid is MASTERFul in its language, pacing and style. Order of Insects also is rumination as short story. I am in love with this book and like your true love, it will always be there.

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.

This collection of long short stories will not let you relax while you read. As with the other Gass I've read, he wants to make you think deeply. There are no clear cut endings, but these aren't clear cut stories.

The best thing about this edition (ISBN 0879233745) is the preface by Gass himself. I usually save such for reading as an afterword (too many prefaces and introductions have too many spoilers). This can be read first or last, but lets you a little more into his thoughts.

His use of language lets you enjoy stories that wouldn't normally hold your interest.

Thanks to John Gardner, I have stumbled upon William Gass. I only regret that it took me this long to discover him. One of the best arguments that I know of in support of a philosophically motivated approach to short fiction.

It's kind of like eating crab legs. The difficulty level isn't as high as Ulysses but a lot higher than Dubliners--so let's say slightly higher than Portrait of the Artist. However, Joyce delivers more rewards. So do Beckett and Faulkner, who are a couple of other writers who I thought of when I read this book. My main problem was that I kept losing my concentration and having to read the same passages over and over again, so I'd spend an hour stuck on the same page. The lack of cohesion between sentences encouraged my mind to wander, even though each individual sentence was clear and well-written. My favorite story was "Order of Insects" because the writing was so lucid and beautiful.

If I were to recommend any of the stories from this book, it would be the first one, "The Pederson Kid." It is the only one of the five that follows a consistent and well-developed story line, which is about several members of a family who endeavor to rescue a neighboring family during a horrendous blizzard. It is colorfully written and loaded with lots of snow related imagery. In the other stories Mr. Gass largely substitutes atmosphere for plot, to wit a housewife who examines in descriptive detail the myriad insects she has collected. Perhaps that is the author's point: being a member of the post-modernist school of writing, Mr. Gass tries to create a certain kind of poetry at the expense of plot and character development, to the extent there is such in short stories. On that level his imagery does attain a certain kind of beauty, but after a while it was not enough to sustain my interest in these stories.

William Gass. No one else but William Gass.