William Gass. No one else but William Gass.

Early William H. Gass is essential. This fairly straightforward book is early Gass. Gass after Omensetter is a very personal taste. Fame, even the tiny minor academic variety, infects human beings oddly. Gass only had a few stories to tell. This book matters. Please keep the great early Gass alive/available & do not worry much about the later still quite interesting but arrogant blatting.

It seems impossible that a collection of stories as ground breaking as these could disappear from the bookshelves, but here it is. I came on to find out about ordering a copy but found the publisher was out! Then let me say, having read it a few times already that while In the Heart of the Heart of the Country gets and deserves much praise in this collection, The Pederson Kid is MASTERFul in its language, pacing and style. Order of Insects also is rumination as short story. I am in love with this book and like your true love, it will always be there.

It is a shame that so much of Gertrude Stein's work is dismissed because of its unconventionality. Though sometimes difficult to read, Stein's writing has a lyrical quality about it unparalleled by the work of other writers. The Making of Americans is probably one of her best, and well worth the effort it might take to read it. I found that after only a few pages, I was moved along by the rhythm and cadence that carries the story. A wonderful read!

What starts of as an anecdotal recounting of what I imagine is Stein's forefathers and foremothers immigrant experience launches off into a brilliant, highly intellectual examination and rhapsody of individuality and conformity among other things (like death and consciousness and the battle between the sexes). This book will literally change the way you think you think. I think it should.

His (very) short stories span the years he spent wandering around in Zurich,Berlin,Biel and Berne (1896-1933) when he was transferred to a mental institution with a much disputed diagnosis of Schizophrenia. Walser's prose is a stroll at the borders of the society, viewing , admiring, mocking it, and finally refusing to be a part of it. His narrations are about ordinary things but are so profound and sweetly tragic that it leaves one almost stunned. He writes small truths which he called the true truths in a very astonishing, bold way. Many a times he ends his stories abruptly leaving one wondering not only about the story but the story teller himself. He is truly a sublime writer. Recommended to those who appreciate beauty in tragedy.

Walser is a magician of interiors that spiral into an incomprehensible, slightly threatening, but tenderly mysterious world. Follow his mind as it walks through his stories. Maintaining his stance of wide-eyed wonder on the margins of a world of sinister adult mediocrity which many of us strive daily to avoid (even as we're sentimentally attracted to it), he is a navigator scribbling out a map useful to all misfits and dreamers.

You won't come acoss a more side-splittingly funny portrait of America in 1976 than what Elkin gives us here. I don't know which is the more: the humor in America that is depressing or the depression that is humorous; in any event, the book is a must for anyone who likes his or her humor bitersweet, his or her prose lush, and his or her mind to be stimulated and entertained!

AS a feminist, I found the story of the white male teacher at the girl's school shocking and revolting, but it is an interesting depiction of the typical male fear of Woman's power. Also of note is where Hawkes whines about how a "Marxist critic" (actually the courageous and brilliant guerilla theorist Richard Feldstein) challenged him in public. Oh, poor Mr. Hawkes! The rest of the book is padded with snipped excerpts from his books, which, if you like that sort of thing, I imagine you would like this book.

Literary St. Louis: A Guide features fifty authors who lived and worked in St. Louis in a guidebook that is ideal for visitors or city residents wanting to explore the diverse literary history of this fascinating region. Enhanced throughout with photographs, maps, illustrations, and colorful anecdotes, the reader is treated to a St. Louis Literary Chronology, commentaries by literary luminaries ranging from Mark Twain to Tennessee Williams, a locations list, bibliography, and a very useful index. If you are planning a trip to St. Louis, Missouri, then William Gass and Lorin Cuoco's Literary St. Louis: A Guide offers a unique, fun and informative approach to sightseeing and historical surveys.

One of the great dirty books of Christendom while being an imaginative commentary of the philosophical problems of perception.

William H. Gass is a truly unique and heart-breaking writer. This is a beautifully written collection of essays that are thoughtful, profound, and disturbing. Two of the essays, "Were There Anthing in the World Worth Worship" and "There Was An Old Woman Who...", are worth the cost of the book by themselves. An amazing essay collection that is smart, angry, sad, and funny.

Understanding William H. Gass by poet and author H. L. Hix is a very thoughtful, informative, scholarly guide to the novels, short stories, novellas, and essays of William H. Gass, an American writer and philosopher with a keen grasp of ethical dilemmas and the lasting effects of childhood "hurts." A scholarly and meticulous discourse on the work of a very intelligent and expressive author, Understanding William H. Gass is very highly recommended for academic Literary Criticism and Philosophy collections, as well as "must" reading for students of the life and work of William H. Gass.

Folly's father is Ploutos (wealth) who regulates all public and private affairs of mankind (war, peace, military power, justice, assemblies, marriages, treaties, laws, art and science, humour and earnestness...).
This book is full of humour, occasionally pessimistic and sometimes a cynical diatribe against mankind. His principal targets: the Roman Catholic Church, his fellow countrymen, the Dutch, and women. Erasmus was a misogynist.
This book is still not old-fashioned and didn't loose his vitriolic style. By reading it, I still learned a lot about human foolish behaviour.
I recommend the short but impressive work by Stefan Zweig on Erasmus for an appraisal of his public and private life.

You cannot beat this edition, prepared in the early darkness of WW II, for depth, humor, and readability. An outstanding look at the most courageous Renaissance man imaginable.

This is a funny and inteligent choice. Praise of Folly may make us think much more than we might -- if that is possible -- imagine.