William H. Gass, 1924- . American author
Links
Finding-Aid for the Gass Papers [00051]Collection Description
Papers, ca. 1948-1981
ca. 5400 items
Access: Open
William Gass, born in Fargo, North Dakota, is one of the most critically acclaimed authors of fiction and critical prose writing today. Trained as a philosopher -- he received his doctorate in philosophy from Cornell in 1954 – Gass is a respected academic and was a popular teacher at Washington University for many years. He is now the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities.
Gass' fiction has received critical praise from the outset of his career. His first novel, Omensetter's Luck (1966), was heralded by critics. Richard Gilman, in his review of the book for The New Republic, went so far as to call it "the most important work of fiction by an American in this literary generation," and his subsequent work has received similar critical response. Gass is equally important as a critic and his theory of fiction manifests itself in both his criticism and his fiction. He is clearly aligned with that group of authors and theorists who view language and writing as the ultimate subject matter of literature. Thus plot, narrative, character, etc, -- the traditional concerns of fiction writers -- are used by Gass to explore the nature of language, as one might expect from an author whose best known critical works are The World Within the Word (1978) and Habitations of the Word (1985). In 1995 he published The Tunnel, a book he spent 30 years writing, and which many consider his masterpiece, and one of the finest American novels of recent times.
The William Gass Papers consists largely of his own manuscript material: manuscripts and proof material toward his books, drafts of various stories, essays, and reviews, interviews, and a miscellaneous assortment of notes and other materials. Also present is a substantial amount of professional correspondence, primarily with universities, magazines, and publishers, as well as with his colleagues in academia and in the literary community.
Bibliography:
First Printings of American Authors , Vol. 4. (Detroit:
Gale Research Co., 1977-1979).
Lepper, Gary. A Bibliography Introducton to Seventy-five
American Authors. (Berkeley: Serendipity Books, 1976).
Selected Names
Gass, William H. 1924- . American author
Barth, John, 1930- . American author
Barthelme, Donald, 1931- . American author
Barthelme, Fredrick, 1943- . American author
Bellow, Saul, 1915- . American author
Busch, Fredrick, 1941- . American author
Cheever, John, 1912-1982. American author
Connell, Evan S., 1924- . American author
Coover, Robert, 1932- . American author
Cowley, Malcolm, 1898- . American author
Curley, Daniel, 1918- . American author & editor
Delbanco, Nicholas, 1942- . American author L1
Elkin, Stanley, 1930-1995. American author & editor
Elliott, George P., 1918-1980. American author
Federman, Raymond, 1928- . American author
Fiedler, Leslie A., 1917- . American author
Gaddis, William, 1922-1998. American author
Gardner, John Champlin, 1933-1982. American author
Hadas, Pamela White, 1946- . American author
Halpern, Daniel, 1945- . American author
Hawkes, John, 1925- . American author
Hecht, Anthony, 1923- . American author
Kessler, Jascha, 1929- . American author
Klinkowitz, Jerome, 1943- . American author
Lebowitz, Albert, 1922- . American author
Lifshin, Lyn, 1944- . American author
Lish, Gordon, 1934- . American author
Lurie, Alison, 1926- . American author
Malamud, Bernard, 1914- . American author
Malin, Irving, 1934- . American author
Matthews, Jack, 1925- . American author
McCaffery, Larry, 1925- . American author
McCord, Joseph, 1930- . American author
Metcalf, Paul, 1917- . American author
Michaels, Leonard, 1933- . American author
Moss, Howard, 1922- . American author
Newman, Charles, 1938- . American author
Nova, Craig, 1945- . American author
Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- . American author
Ozick, Cynthia,, 1928- . American author
Percy, Walker, 1916- . American author
Pinsky, Robert, 1940- . American author
Rakosi, Carl, 1903- . American author
Roth, Philip, 1933- . American author
Schwartz, Howard, 1945- . American author
Segal, Lore, 1928- . American author
Sontag, Susan, 1933- . American author
Starbuck, George, 1931- . American author
Stefanile, Felix, 1920- . American author
Strand, Mark, 1934- . American author
Thurston, Jarvis A., 1914- . American author
Van Duyn, Mona, 1921- . American author
Wakoski, Diane, 1937- . American author