In the heart of the heart of the country : and other stories

by William H. Gass

Paper Book, 2014

Status

Available

Call number

0.gass

Genres

Fiction

Publication

New York : New York Review Books, 2014.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Patrick311

The best book I've read in a long, long time. This collection of long short stories (apparently there is such a thing) range from the plot-driven (the sinister "The Pedersen Kid") to the more experimental ("In the Heart of the Heart of the Country"), but never suffers a spat of boring language.

Gass captures the hard, unforgiving American Midwest -- its provincialism, its bleak winters, and its small, simple pleasures (the way winter light illuminates an icicle, for instance) -- through a series of different and fully-realized consciousnesses. An incredible achievement. Since I'm sometimes a poor salesman, I give you a sentence from "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country":"It's true there are moments--foolish moments, ecstasy on a tree stump--when I'm all but gone, scattered I like to think like seed, for I'm the sort now in the fool's position of having love left over which I'd like to lose; what good is it now to me, candy ungiven after Halloween?"

Show Less

2 more

LibraryThing member Librarianlacey

Gass at his early best. He is to be appreciated on the level of the word, then sentence, then perhaps paragraph. The rest is just details.

LibraryThing member b.masonjudy

This is a strong collection of short stories by William H. Gass. I particularly enjoyed The Order of Insects and Icicles for the outlandish mania that grips the protagonists of the stories. In Icicles it's a failed real estate agents and in The Order of Insects a housewife who keeps finding dead

insects on the carpet. Gass writes in a lyrical style that brings a flourish of mania to a setting that would in most cases be quite dull.

Show Less

Fewer