Cartesian Sonata And Other Novellas (Paperback)

by William H. Gass (Author) "This is the story of Ella Bend Hess, of how she became clairvoyant and what she was able to see..." (more)
Key Phrases: secret revenges, pure revenge, wooden soldier, Luther Penner, Elizabeth Bishop, Madame Betz (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Revered two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle award, Gass serves up an enticing mix of high-flown lyricism, sketchy narrative and momentary brilliance in his playful latest fiction (after the celebrated The Tunnel). The title novella is really an amalgamation of three short stories written during the 1960s and '70s, before and after the great stories included in In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. Ostensibly the story of a clairvoyant named Ella Bend, her Cassandra-like curse of psychic vision and her brutal husband, this bleak interior monologue charts the narrator's descent into near madness as she escapes into an imaginary intrigue between Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop. Here, as in the other novellas, Gass's love of verbal wordplay almost eliminates narrative coherency. "Bed and Breakfast" is a variation on a Rod Serling plot: a traveling accountant takes a room at a rather sinister old-fashioned bed and breakfast and feels compelled to settle down there. You'd think Walter Riffaterre, the accountant, would look for a Howard Johnson's or even a Motel 6 when the landlady starts conversing in Emily Dickinson outtakes ("what would we do if we had no burden, no weight upon our chests, we'd fly, wouldn't we? Fly like fluff, up and away to nowhere, for we're nothing but our burdens..."). While this work may puzzle or even bore some readers, Gass is an engrossing character-portraitist, whose plots depend on psychic and spiritual motions rather than linked events and whose humor, inventiveness and erudition keep the ride inviting, wherever it goes. Agent, Janklow and Nesbit.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (January 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465026206
• ISBN-13: 978-0465026203
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,039,683 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning realizaation of the Cartesian halves., September 23, 1999

By	J. Stokley Grimes ([e-mail]) (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas (Hardcover)

a stunning realization of the Cartesian halves: the mind (on the one side); the flesh (on the other). All of the Gassian exploration of the marrow of language, metaphor and the life of lyricism is here. But so is his visceral presentation of the flesh, bones and fragile surfaces of the body of one Ella Bend. With the halves (thinking; therefore, being) folding and unfolding into and away from each other. The smell of earth, the abuses of existence, the pull of poetry: its all there. One of the best things I've ever read.

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the better writers most likely not to be read...., May 25, 2009

By	Mark Nadja "Literary Outlaw, author *Hardcore... (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas (Hardcover)

-- "Cartesian Sonata" is one of those works of postmodern fiction that you'd be hard-pressed to say, with any authority, what it's really about...unless you read the flyleaf provided by the publisher.

-- According to which, in the first of the four novellas collected here, Gass has re-imagined the philosophy of Decartes with God as a befuddled writer, his wife as Mind in the form of a modern-day Cassandra.....etc etc.

-- Really? So that's what it was about? Who'd ever guess? How, for that matter, did the person who wrote the copy, unless it was Gass himself, pulling our leg just a little bit.

-- Philosophical allusions do indeed abound in "Cartesian Sonata"--the collection and each of the novellas that comprise it--but to fix a pat and reductive interpretation on these stories is misleading...and a mistake.

-- What are they about? In general, they are about how we interpret/misinterpret the world around us and try to gain some degree of mastery and control over it through signs, symbols, and objects.

-- In this sense, using Descartes as a touchstone is perhaps of some help. Is there anything we know for certain? If so, how so? "I think therefore I am." Maybe. But the further we stray from that citadel of "I" the less clear everything becomes.

-- A woman harboring a possibly lethal obsession with the poetry and the private lives of Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore. A traveling accountant who finds "salvation" in a scrupulously appointed bed and breakfast. A man who's devoted his life to the mastery of petty vengeance in theory and practice. The dysfunctional marriage of a dying psychic and an insurance salesman.

-- Gass riffs off these unlikely scenarios with a great deal of wit, erudition, and imagination. He's a fantastic prose stylist, the kind that some readers will find unreadable precisely because he's so good; he stretches, twists, and redesigns the language into what amounts to a prose rollercoaster. And he's funny--very funny in a way that makes literature even of scatology.

--If you're looking for stories in which "a+b+c+d" happens and ends neatly wrapped up in "e," "Cartesian Sonata" is probably going to grate on your nerves and seem a pretentious bag of Gass signifying not much at all.

--But if you can appreciate the sort of writing that finds a justification for its existence in the beauty of the writing itself, that apprehends reality in the musing about what its nature might be, and that seems to delight in the rush and exhilaration of expression, as if our despair were somehow mitigated by how well we can sing it, then "Cartesian Sonata" may well be music to your ears.

9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning realization of the Cartesian halves., September 23, 1999

By	J. Stokley Grimes ([e-mail]) (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas (Hardcover)

A stunning realization of the Cartesian halves: the mind (on the one side); the flesh (on the other). All of the Gassian exploration of the marrow of language, metaphor and the life of lyricism is here. But so is his visceral presentation of the flesh, bones and fragile surfaces of the body of one Ella Bend. With the halves (thinking; therefore, being) folding and unfolding into and away from each other. The smell of earth, the abuses of existence, the pull of poetry: its all there. One of the best things I've ever read.