Tests of Time [Hardcover]

William H. Gass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 26, 2002

In these fourteen witty and elegant essays, William Gass (“the finest prose stylist in America”—Steven Moore, Washington Post) writes about writing, reading, culture, history, politics, and public opinion.

In the first of three parts, Gass addresses literary matters and writers, and contemplates, among other things: the nature of narrative and its philosophical implications; experimental fiction and its importance; literary “lists” (including the currently controversial canon of western literature) and their use. In part two, Gass looks at social and political contretemps: the extent and cost of political influences on writers; the First Amendment, the Fatwa, and Salman Rushdie; our view of Germany, as in “How German are we?” Finally, Gass gives us a celebration of Flaubert and considers the problems of writing history.

Tests of Time is William Gass at his most dazzling. It is a high-wire act of thinking and writing that serves up what Vladimir Nabokov called an “indescribable tingle of the spine.”

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For those willing to overlook the author's wandering style and bursts of elitism, William H. Gass's latest series of essays, Tests of Time, yields many rewards. Gass unifies this ambitious work with a focus on the ethics of writing, and, on a more general level, morality. The first of three sections, Literary Matters, includes essays investigating the nature of narrative, experimental fiction, writing's effect on memory and experience, and culture and canonization. The second section, Social and Political Contretemps, explores the influence of politics, religion, censorship, and nationalism on writers, as well as the similarities between American and German culture. Finally, the Stuttgart Seminar Lectures section concerns the value of well-documented history and artistic writing. Gass insists throughout that only through creative, brave, and responsible writing can humanity avert moral degeneration--and he often succeeds in powerfully conveying and inspiring this point. His thorough reading of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities beautifully emphasizes the role of poetry in our connection with the past and present. "There Was an Old Woman Who" entertains and informs with its use of a largely forgotten case of urban cannibalism as an example of the need for accurate documentation and a moral view of history. Unfortunately Gass often muddles his valuable ideas with overlong ranting, inflammatory rhetoric, and out-of-touch popular-culture criticisms. The author is easily at his best when he remains succinct and organized yet impassioned, as he does in the collection's excellent final essay, "Transformations." Here and elsewhere, Gass delivers a modernist critique in every way exemplifying the courage, skill, and consciousness in writing that he so values. --Ross Doll

From Library Journal

Divided into three sections, this collection of 14 essays from award-winning writer Gass (The Recognitions) is witty and erudite, frequently providing justification for Steven Moore's comment in the Washington Post that Gass is the "the finest prose stylist in America." In the first section, on literary matters, Gass says, "Stories have morals if men do not." He declares Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities "a work shaped by the mouth and meant for the ear," like one of its models, The Travels of Marco Polo. The second section, which deals with "social and political contretemps," begins with a historical litany of the many ways writers and politics have collided and includes essays on various aspects of censorship. "The fatwa was pronounced against us all," Gass writes. "It commanded the murder of a mouth, yet issued from the mouth of a murderer." The last section reprints Gass's lectures at the Stuttgart Seminar in Cultural Studies, where he celebrates another great prose stylist, Flaubert, and discusses the problems of writing history. Recommended for academic and large public libraries. Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., CO
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (February 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375412573
• ISBN-13: 978-0375412578
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,050,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Essential collection from a master essayist, December 3, 2007

By 

Brian A. Oard (Midwestern USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tests of Time: Essays (Paperback)

Although addicted to alliteration, Gass is great once he gets going. This collection boasts a plethora of provocative (and sometimes very funny) thoughts, along with prose so great you'll want to telephone friends in the middle of the night and read it aloud to them. Of special note are "The Writer and Politics: A Litany", which is just that, a VERY long list of writers' experiences with political power, and Gass's masterful anti-religion polemic, "Were There Anything in the World Worth Worship." The latter contains one of my favorite Gassean epigrams: "...the chief point in life is to die of something and never for something if it can be helped." Sane words in an insane time.

8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please read this book..., December 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Tests of Time (Hardcover)

William H. Gass is a truly unique and heart-breaking writer. This is a beautifully written collection of essays that are thoughtful, profound, and disturbing. Two of the essays, "Were There Anthing in the World Worth Worship" and "There Was An Old Woman Who...", are worth the cost of the book by themselves. An amazing essay collection that is smart, angry, sad, and funny.

6 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Gasseous Matters, November 8, 2003

By 

Daniel Myers (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tests of Time (Hardcover)

I suppose I bought this book to get a better idea of what Gass was about. He admires several of my favourite, rather obscure authors, such as Lowry and Gaddis, and has written insightful reviews on their lives and work and even introductions to certain masterworks of theirs. On the other hand, his essays for, say, The New York Review of Books, aren't even essays or reviews in any sort of conventional sense. Perhaps a new term is needed-Narrative commentaries? In any event, they always come across as clumsy and inscrutable in a not very endearing sense to me. This book has confirmed that impression, and I think the entire section on Flaubert a lot of rot. I understand that in putting the words of "The Master" in the mind of a fictional character who has memorized all of Flaubert's letters he's attempting to convey the soul or essence of Flaubert in a way in which a straightforward essay would not. He fails. It's rubbish.
I also throw my hands up regarding his essay on Calvino's Invisible Cities. - Well, that is to say, I know what I think of it. It's too esoteric by half. And the game is pretty much up when, at the height of his, er, Calvinolatry, Gass claims that this slim volume out-Proust's Proust. After such a disproportion, any attempt to take him seriously anent Calvino can be no longer seriously maintained.

But there are some good sections herein, the best being the eponymous essay on why certain works remain resonant with readers throughout the ages. This is Gass at his best. This is the Gass who motivated my purchase of this book. This is the Gass who, unbeknownst to me until I read this essay, holds another of my favourite writers in his pantheon and provides startling insights on why his work passes the tests of time: to wit, Thoreau.

So, all in all, a mixed bag. Unfortunately, the rather tedious parts tend to outnumber the brilliant ones. And Gass's style, in general, seems to me one that simply wears thin after a couple hundred pages. When Gass sticks to literature, or to commenting on the writer in the everyday world, through the ages, as he does in "The Writer and Politics: A Litany," he is scintillating and exciting. Most of the writing in this book, though, is of an unpleasantly offbeat nature that tends to the grating or soporific, by turns. So, three stars for the pearls amidst the paste.