William H. Gass - In the Heart of the Heart of the Country BOOK REVIEW

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1 окт 2024

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Комментарии : 89

@alexjohnson9798 6 месяцев назад

"furious middle class data scientist working from home, not interacting with a single soul, on psych meds" damn Cliff how'd you know?

@WillGraham-uv1ol 6 месяцев назад

Omg that jump scare after the coffee sip I was 😮

@duder6387 6 месяцев назад

I highly recommend “The Tunnel” I read it twice last year and I still can’t get enough.

@Formandformlessness 6 месяцев назад

Hell yes. One of my favorite novels.

@DemeterTelphousia-Erinyes 6 месяцев назад

This is what I like about your channel- hearing about authors I’ve not heard of. I’ve read thousands of books ( I’m not young so I’ve had a long time!) so it’s even more of a treat.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

Thomas Bernhard is the artist of failure. “The Loser” is his funniest book.

@jaredfernandez5849 6 месяцев назад

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. Been hoping you'd give that book a review.

@michaelmasiello6752 6 месяцев назад

Just thought you should know that I started reading this one late last night, thanks to this review. I'm about halfway through. Just jaw-dropping. The Gass I'd read is On Being Blue and Omensetter's Luck. Guess I'll be reading The Tunnel and Middle C too. Thanks for the awesome review--it's not the first time you sent me scurrying to the bookstore, and it won't be the last. Man, "The Pederson Kid"... that's something else.

@brandontischer5880 6 месяцев назад

One of my philosophy professors, John Humphrey, was a doctoral student under Gass at WashU in the 80's. Professor Humphrey told me that he had to grade essays for Gass' philosophy of literature course and that Gass would meet with him once a semester to "discuss" how good he was at grading. These discussions would happen at Gass' house with a bottle of cognac. Gass also received a standing ovation from his students on his last day of work before retirement. Gass never talked about his own writing in normal conversation and my professor was not aware of The Tunnel until it finally came out. Matter of fact he was not aware of Gass being a fiction writer until then; he had only read an article of Gass' in an academic publication. My impression from Humphrey was that Gass' course revolved heavily around Gertrude Stein's lectures and texts like Finnegan's Wake.

@kylenewberry9792 6 месяцев назад

Yeah narcissists like that like surrounding themselves with a bunch of sycophantic rats that will suck up to them and feed their ego, not surprising to hear at all about this idiot.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

I heard that Bill Gass was #metoo by an underage reader of Rilke.

@maryamtshali5892 6 месяцев назад

Recently read Erasure by Percival Everett, and it felt like a book you would potentially be interested in, especially the esoteric vignettes engaging with philosophy and art. It's been a few weeks since I finished it, and I'm still digesting it ...

@lorenzoaguilar2403 6 месяцев назад

"This guy sharpens sentences like knives". So poetic and, by the way, dark. Thank you Cliff. :)

@stepankurecka5027 3 месяца назад

You mentioned him almost as much as Gass in this video, I swear to god, I will be so glad if you one day drop J R or The Recognitions video review.

@thedoorsbest 6 месяцев назад

Another one to add to my reading list. Thanks Cliff. Cheers.

@mjr_schneider 6 месяцев назад

Fine, have it your way, Clifford, I'm fond of your choice of gloomy Midwestern psychological fever dreams.

@GromKuba 6 месяцев назад

I recommend you author from Norway - Tarjei Vesaas, and his best novels The Ice Palace and The Birds. It's one from my favorite writers.

@Patrick.__ 6 месяцев назад

I recently read those, I loved them, especially The Ice Palace with the imagery.

@michaelmasiello6752 6 месяцев назад

The Birds is gorgeous.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

I still need to check out books my friend Obed recommends.

@Ivxnrxjxs 6 месяцев назад

Will check out.. Also, do you write? Like fiction or essays?

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

Crepuscular is an excellent synonym for the colour blue.

@besteven 6 месяцев назад

Annie Proulx took my breath away with the release of 'Close Range' while my ex-wife was already diving delightedly into everything Gass--whom I've inadvertently ignored until this really excellent review, Cliff. ItHotHotC ordered while watching this episode of BTF. Thank you.

@zenape619 6 месяцев назад

Dude please do an Aleister Crowley review.

@FlintSL 6 месяцев назад

I feel there is a Gaddis review imminent, Cliffy. I read JR a while ago--that thing is nuts: information overload, funny, exhausting etc. etc.

@abantorprolaap 6 месяцев назад

Hi Clifford, thanks for your as usual excellent videos. One request, have you ever reviewed any book by Annie Erneux? I would love to hear your discussion on 'Happening' and/or 'Simple Passion'. If you have already discussed them, sorry. If not, would you please consider reviewing them in your channel? Thank you.

@aunaun3106 6 месяцев назад

Waiting youll make a review of “The Blind Owl” by Sadegh Hedayat..

@natezipp6419 25 дней назад

Omensetter’s Luck is another good jumping on point for Gass, kind of in the vein of Faulkner and much shorter than The Tunnel.

@timkjazz 6 месяцев назад

Gass is a true literary giant, unfortunate he is not more well known.

@XVXSwiftHands 6 месяцев назад

The books finally went back to being better than food. Welcome back clif!

@marcelhidalgo1076 6 месяцев назад

Were they ever worse than food?

@meyersmegafictionalmusings7692 6 месяцев назад

Great video dude.. I must stress the brilliance of each of his novels. Perhaps attack one of the shorter ones (Middle C he wrote in his eighties) or his first brilliant book ‘Omensetter’s Luck’

@ididgt4259 6 месяцев назад

This is my favorite short story collection ever, Gass was on another level

@Linda-bq7eq 6 месяцев назад

I read a review of On Being Blue by WM Gass some years ago. It piqued my interest and I read it. Damn…I wasn’t ready for it, it struck me with its sophistication and complexity and those were the parts I understood - or I think I understood them - in a mild sort of way. After I finished it ( I didn’t finish it - do you ever finish a book like that? It keeps coming back and hitting you in the head.) I put it in a book donation box at the mall. Now I may have to read it again. Love your work! Thanks.

@jamesgwarrior1981 6 месяцев назад

Read and have The Omensetters. One DFWALLACES recommends or favs. Forget which.

@connorlane625 6 месяцев назад

I don't think my reading has been the same since reading this collection. It totally floored me.

@UncleVenomsBooksandWhisk-ip9pl 6 месяцев назад

Thanks!

@BetterThanFoodBookReviews 6 месяцев назад

Thanks very much for your kind support!

@johnjacob3175 6 месяцев назад

The church steeple__He made a point of admiring Holderlyn’s fragments, one being an image of a church steeple and such. Hard to not see (enjoy) a correlation, especially if thinking of Holderlyn later, alone, in a turret or apartment, maybe in St Louis…

@ellelala39 6 месяцев назад

Do read Barth's The Sot-weed Factor. You will love it.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

Out of date nowadays.

@nancyberry3655 5 месяцев назад

Ok, so I was pretty busy with This, That, and The Other, but you described Icicles, and I found it, and you were right. I've watched many of your videos, but not all. Have you read/reviewed T Bernhard's Woodcutters? Maybe I got that from you, too! Glad to be here. 😊

@Formandformlessness 6 месяцев назад

Love to see Gass on this channel. He’s truly an under-appreciated writer. His essays are incredible.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

Gass writes as if writers were talking to themselves.

@zsazsavoom 6 месяцев назад

Any idea (guess) which type of synesthete Gass might have been? My guess would be that he had a smell based form, mebbe smell triggers color...but then I haven't read all his work.

@mitch8948 6 месяцев назад

It looks like The Tunnel is exceptionally hard/pricy to find right now 😢 seems like there’s a republishing by Dalkey Arcchive next year though

@seldomplayed6279 6 месяцев назад

Oof. It’s been a while that I hear about a book that I can acknowledge is brilliant, but also that I am not remotely interested in ever reading. With people still writing long blog posts about the self destruction of Aaron Bushnell I do not wanna hear anything about tortured self-destructive people for a very long time. I just can’t. So respect, but I don’t think I’m gonna pick this one up if it makes any sense.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree got his hair cut.

@thoughts0utloud 6 месяцев назад

0:29

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

$3Bill is a cool idea for a cryptocurrency.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

The Midwestern Dollar.

@christopherreynolds4446 4 месяца назад

Stephen crowder

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

Gass was great at creating ideas about failure and depression.

@BrianHaag 6 месяцев назад

"perplexing crepuscular prose-poem novella"

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

Begin with the beguine.

@drkndlght019 6 месяцев назад

Greetings and more )

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

Gass’ work is full of hate, but he writes from a love of the art of writing.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

I never thought about how this would go.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

You’re reading the Tunnel.

@davidlee6720 6 месяцев назад

First came across Gas in Best American Short Stories, and though the other writers were good, he was the one I kept going back to and have done so ever since. There is nothing in it like a normal story, just a stream-of-consciousness, almost dream-like, elongated poem that drifts from one strange disconnected sequence to another - all of them strangely moving --all at times that read like the best passages in a first-person novel, others like the surreal scene from a film by Bunuel.

@marcelhidalgo1076 6 месяцев назад

Fantastic opening

@mtnshelby7059 6 месяцев назад

The Tunnel is an amazing journey.

@jackwalter5970 6 месяцев назад

Gass' writing is life-changing.

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

That’s what the guy on your cooking shows says about dim sum with cocaine eyes. Gass doesn’t change lives but his writing is instructive to sensitivities around pressure points and mental acuities. My fave professor Upton used to stress these notions before he was forced into retirement by wolves.

@BooksYouHaventRead 6 месяцев назад

I have a special place in the heart of my heart for this book. One always remembers his first NYRB.

@Ozgipsy 6 месяцев назад

Mate, drive through the Pilbara or Kimberley if you think dead animals are weird. That’ll disabuse you of it.

@jezykjezowski7417 6 месяцев назад

Speaking of cold, greetings from Iceland. It's tough.

@nikkivenable73 6 месяцев назад

Another book I’ve never heard of! I just ordered it! I cannot wait!

@antherthalmhersser7239 6 месяцев назад

This is like red hulk ligotti or sober alacrity burroughs

@Liisa3139 6 месяцев назад

I can't stomach gothic lit, but as I just found out my local library has some essays by Gass, I could try those.

@jesusgonzalez-acton8045 6 месяцев назад

Others already commented this but I just had to lol- please please do The Tunnel at some point soon. He did something fairly unique there, using the most gorgeous prose (you can see his love for Rilke and Flaubert seep through) to put together incredibly hateful, angry, vile sentences

@ryanand154 6 месяцев назад

The Tunnel is not really that interesting. Way out of date at this point.

@bernardofitzpatrick5403 6 месяцев назад

Sounds excellent … a must read. Elegant madness … yes! Love Woolf , affinity right there. If Annie Proloux is endorsing, I’m in.

@LuisFelipe-zx6uu 6 месяцев назад

If you still want something shorter before The Tunnel, then read his other linguistic masterpiece "Ommensetter's Luck"

@bookofdust 6 месяцев назад

I’m intrigued, but I’m only reading female authors this month. I’m going try to comeback to this collection later and also not watch the whole video and go in a bit cold to it all.

@nikkivenable73 6 месяцев назад

The only female author I even remotely enjoy is Woolf. Any others you’d recommend?

@bookofdust 6 месяцев назад

@@nikkivenable73 Atwood and Winterson, for me, are the greatest living female authors, Alice Munro for short stories, but I don’t think she’s actively writing anymore. Woolf was the first female author I completely fell in love with, and Didion means the world to me, especially in terms of nonfiction. Sontag for philosophical writings. Morrison can not be denied as being one of the greatest writers of the 2nd half of the 20th century regardless of sex.

@-so4im 6 месяцев назад

@@nikkivenable73O’Connor!

@kylenewberry9792 6 месяцев назад

If you are put off by pretentious nonsense then I would highly avoid watching your own reviews, you would really not like them.

@huugosorsselsson4122 6 месяцев назад

I'm able to make sense of them easily. Maybe you're not a native speaker?

@and_such 6 месяцев назад

even dummies like me understand him, and I am not a native speaker. he is really down to earth

@kylenewberry9792 6 месяцев назад

I am a native speaker, I just think he has unfortunately disappeared up his own ass over the years. Maybe the only guy who ever got less humble and more up his own ass after LEAVING Los Angeles, and not vice versa.

@traplordhentaimaster1633 6 месяцев назад

Thanks for reviewing something by Gass. I want to read the tunnel but that shit looks mammoth to the say the least. Gonna start small.

@deep_fried_midget 6 месяцев назад

I loved Omensetter's Luck and have been thinking about it ever since I read it years ago, but I could never get in to Gass's other stuff. God / religion are huge topics in OL.