In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories
by William H. Gass
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First published in 1968, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country established William Gass as one of America’s finest and boldest writers of fiction, and nearly fifty years later, the book still stands as a landmark of contemporary fiction. The two novellas and three short stories it contains are all set in the Midwest, and together they offer a mythical reimagining of America’s heartland, with its punishing extremes of heat and cold, its endless spaces and claustrophobic households, show more its hidden and baffled desires, its lurking threat of violence. Exploring and expanding the limits of the short story, Gass works magic with words, words that are as squirming, regal, and unexpected as the roaches, boys, icicles, neighbors, and neuroses that fill these pages, words that shock, dazzle, illumine, and delight.. show less
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tootstorm These two story collections tend to go hand-in-hand in literary-slash-academic circles, and they're both about on equal footing. Despite this preceding reputation, the similarities aren't so extensive, as Gass takes a more modernist approach and perfects it when and where he can. At his best, his stories fill a hole left behind by Faulkner's thematic antiquity. Pure gothic dread--or not so pure, coming off Gass' experimental, innovative genius, ultimately warranting the comparisons to his more self-consciously postmodern contemporary.
30
Member Reviews
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 show more 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
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.
Gass is a philologopher, certainly, but I find that it takes patience to chop trough the thickets and brambles of his prose to find those soaring moments of poetry that lash out and sting your senses.
The Pedersen Kid: vividly alienating. 4.
Mrs. Mean: starkly profound. 5.
Icicles: disengagingly meandering. 2.
Order of Insects: platitudinally overwrought. 2.
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country: jabbingly groping. 3.
AVG: 3.2
The Pedersen Kid: vividly alienating. 4.
Mrs. Mean: starkly profound. 5.
Icicles: disengagingly meandering. 2.
Order of Insects: platitudinally overwrought. 2.
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country: jabbingly groping. 3.
AVG: 3.2
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.
This book just kicked my ass. holy fuck. I MUST rereading Omensetters Luck...
Note: the last time I rated a book of fiction 5 stars was 2014...
Note: the last time I rated a book of fiction 5 stars was 2014...
Very good. Here's my favourite quote:
“it’s not surprising that the novelists of the slums, the cities, and the crowds, should find that sex is but a scratch to ease a tickle, that we’re most human when we’re sitting on the john, and that the justest image of our life is in full passage through the plumbing.”
“it’s not surprising that the novelists of the slums, the cities, and the crowds, should find that sex is but a scratch to ease a tickle, that we’re most human when we’re sitting on the john, and that the justest image of our life is in full passage through the plumbing.”
I think this is what we read ( can't remember anything about it now )
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Author Information
William Howard Gass was born in Fargo, North Dakota on July 30, 1924. During World War II, he served as an ensign in the Navy. He received an A.B. in philosophy from Kenyon College in 1947 and a PhD in philosophy from Cornell University in 1954. He taught at several universities including The College of Wooster, Purdue University, and Washington show more University in St. Louis. He wrote novels, collections of short stories and novellas, and collections of criticism. His novels included Omensetter's Luck, Middle C, and The Tunnel, which received the American Book Award. His other works of fiction included In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, Willie Master's Lonesome Wife, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, and Eyes: Novellas and Stories. His collections of criticism included Tests of Time; A Temple of Texts, which won the 2007 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism; and Habitations of the Word and Finding a Form, which both won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His essay collections included Fiction and the Figures of Life, The World Within the Word, and Reading Rilke. He died from congestive heart failure on December 6, 2017 at the age of 93. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories
- Original publication date
- 1968
- Dedication
- For Joanne, Oliver, and Allan
- First words
- In the heart of the heart of this collection, deep inside the title story, the narrator contemplates his cat, Mr. Tick: "You are a cat - you cannot understand - you are a cat so easily." The confident Mr. Tick, unlike the nar... (show all)rator does not worry over his mortality or think about the burden of self-consciousness. He does not care that the past is past He does not fear possibility or imagine himself as anything other than the at he is Mr. Tick spends his time murdering birds and walking across rooftops. Content just to be alive, he moves elegantly, "his long tail rhyming with his paws," leaving our forlorn narrator to fend off loneliness on his own, with the only weapon he has at his disposal: words. -Introduction, Joanna Scott
Few of the stories one has it in one's self to speak get spoken, because the heart rarely confesses to intelligence its deeper needs; and few of the stories one has at the top of one's head to tell get told, because the mind ... (show all)does not always possess the voice for them. Even when the voice is there, and the tongue is limber as if with liquor or with love, where is that sensitive, admiring, ther pair of ears? -Preface
Big Hans yelled, so I came out. The barn was dark, but the sun burned on the snow. Hans was carrying something from the crib. I yelled, but Big Hans didn't hear. He was in the house with what he had before I reached the steps... (show all). -The Pederson Kid - Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.54
- Canonical LCC
- PS3557.A845 I5
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Statistics
- Members
- 877
- Popularity
- 30,874
- Reviews
- 8
- Rating
- (3.93)
- Languages
- 5 — English, French, German, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 13
- ASINs
- 11
