In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country

Description

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country is vintage William H. Gass: two novellas and three short stories, set in the Midwest, exhibiting Gass's characteristic and wildly original verbal brilliance and philosophical acuity. The volume includes The Pedersen Kid, a story originally published a few years before the 1965 publication of Gass's first novel Omensetter's Luck. Words populate these stories, as squirming, regal, and unexpected as the roaches, boys, icicles, neighbors, neuroses, and properties they describe. No matter how strange or estranged the human consciousness directing each symphony of words, his or her fear, delight, and disgust is uncanny and familiar.

Author description

WILLIAM H. GASS is an American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, critic, and emeritus professor of philosophy. His first novel, Omensetter's Luck, was published in 1966 and since then he has published several more works of fiction, including The Tunnel and Middle C. He has also published collections of essays, including On Being Blue (available from NYRB Classics), Fiction and the Figures of Life, and Life Sentences, and has received many awards and honors.