William H. Gass
William H. Gass
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Full Name and Common Aliases
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William Howard Gass was an American novelist, essayist, and critic. He is commonly referred to as Bill Gass.
Birth and Death Dates
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Born on July 30, 1924, in Fargo, North Dakota. Passed away on December 6, 2017, at the age of 93.
Nationality and Profession(s)
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William H. Gass was an American novelist, essayist, and critic. He taught creative writing and literature at universities across the United States, including Washington University in St. Louis.
Early Life and Background
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Gass grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and later moved to Ohio with his family. His early life was marked by a love of reading and writing, which he nurtured through private schools and a scholarship to Oberlin College. After serving in the United States Navy during World War II, Gass went on to study at Kenyon College, where he earned his Bachelor's degree in 1947.
Major Accomplishments
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Gass's career as a writer spanned over six decades, during which he published numerous novels, essays, and reviews. His novels are known for their experimental style, blending elements of philosophy, psychology, and literature to create complex narratives that challenge readers' perceptions. Some notable accomplishments include:
Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife (1968): A novel written in the form of a series of fragments, which won the National Book Award in 1969.
The Tunnel (1995): A novel exploring themes of art, identity, and the human condition.
Notable Works or Actions
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Gass's writing is characterized by its depth, nuance, and intellectual curiosity. His essays on literature and philosophy are widely regarded as some of his most significant contributions to American letters. Some notable works include:
Habitations of the Word (1984): A collection of essays that explore the relationship between language and reality.
Finding a Form (1996): A collection of essays on literature, art, and philosophy.
Impact and Legacy
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Gass's work has had a profound impact on contemporary American literature. His innovative style and willingness to experiment with form have influenced generations of writers. His legacy can be seen in the many young writers he mentored during his teaching career at Washington University in St. Louis.
Why They Are Widely Quoted or Remembered
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Gass's writing is remembered for its lyricism, depth, and intellectual curiosity. He was a masterful writer who pushed the boundaries of language to explore fundamental questions about human existence. His quotes are widely used because they offer insights into the nature of reality, art, and identity.
As a writer, Gass's most enduring contribution is his unwavering commitment to exploring the complexities of human experience through innovative storytelling and intellectual curiosity.
Quotes by William H. Gass
William H. Gass's insights on:
I know of nothing more difficult than knowing who you are, and having the courage to share the reasons for the catastrophe of your character with the world.
It’s a simple world for her. A curtain fluttering – that’s how she is – lives, moves – obediently, yet with every appearnace of freedom and caprice.
Furthermore, the sense of passion or of power, of depth and vibrancy, feeling and vision, we take away from any work is the result of the intermingling, balance, play, and antagonism between these: it is the arrangement of blues, not any blue itself, which lets us see the mood it formulates, whether pensive melancholy or thoughtless delight, so that one to whom aesthetic experience comes easily will see, as Schopenhauer suggested, sadness in things as readily as smoky violet or moist verdigris.
My face is muffled in my mother’s clothing. Her rhinestones injure me. See: my feet are going. Fish flee the forefinger of my aunt. The sun streams over the geraniums. What has this to do with what I feel, with what I am.
If we had the true and complete history of one man – which would be the history of his head – we would sign the warrants and end ourselves forever, not because of the wickedness we would find within that man, no, but because of the meagerness of feeling, the miniaturization of meaning, the pettiness of ambition, the vulgarities, the vanities, the diminution of intelligence, the endless trivia we’d encounter, the ever present dust.
Such a person has no place. He can’t be found. He’s like one of those unphysical things they talk about in science now–like one of those things that’s moving, you know, always moving on, but through no space.
Writing. Not writing. Twin Terrors. Putting one’s mother into words... It may have been easier to put her in her grave.
The real subject of On Being Blue is language itself, which he sees as glorious to the exact degree that it is also inadequate, unable to sustain an immediate relation between a word on the one hand and its arbitrary and yet indissoluble referent on the other. All words are figurative; no blue is ever just blue.
I should like to suggest that at least on the face of it a stroke by stroke story of a copulation is exactly as absurd as a chew by chew account of the consumption of a chicken’s wing.
Joseph thought he knew the plants that had sought out the twitterers, and those that had risen for the wren, or a fern that turned, not to the sun, but toward the chatter of the chickadee, so quick were the petals of its song, so sharp so plentiful so light, so showy in their symmetry, so suddenly in shade.