William H. Gass Tribute

Bookworm

KCRW

Arts

4.5 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2017

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The great novelist, essayist and prose stylist William H. Gass died last week at 93. This tribute show is composed of excerpts from previous Bookworm conversations with Gass.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.
0:03.8	Boots!
0:06.0	Where would we be without boos?
0:12.0	Where would we be without good?
0:16.0	No, Timberd. It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we need without books?
0:23.6	From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.
0:30.6	Last week, one of our great American writers, William H. Gass, died at 93. Today's show consists of a tribute to him, excerpts from
0:43.0	the bookworm shows that I recorded with him over the years. I want to talk a little bit
0:50.2	about William Gass because he has at least two books, two novels, and a book of short
0:58.1	stories too, that if there's any forever, will last forever. Those books are his book of
1:05.6	stories in the heart of the heart of the country. His novel Omen Settor's Locke, which before his death,
1:15.9	David Foster Wallace, named as one of his five favorite American novels. And of course,
1:25.5	his masterpiece, The Tunnel, a book he worked on for between 26 and 30 years, an extraordinary work.
1:35.3	Now, you know, there was a literary magazine. I was in high school.
1:42.0	This literary magazine had published fragments, early sections of Philip Roth's
1:50.6	port noise complaint.
1:52.3	No one had ever seen a novel about masturbation before everyone was talking about
1:58.0	this paperback literary journal, New American Review, and what was
2:03.0	also in that first issue, in addition to Philip Roth, was William H. Gass's story in
2:09.3	the heart of the heart of the country.
2:11.6	This was one of his major publications, and it began a love affair for me with William Gass's prose. There was
2:23.2	nothing like it. He took to calling it Baroque by the end of his life, and one of the last
	...

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