The world within the word: essays

✍ Scribed by Gass, William H

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Year: 1978;2012
• Tongue: English
• Edition: 1st ed
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In this sequel to Fiction & the Figures of Life, one of America's most brilliant and eclectic minds examines literature, culture, writers (their lives and works), and the nature and uses of language and the written word. Included are discussions of Valery, Henry Miller, Sartre, Freud, Faulkner, suicide, "art and order," and the transformation of language into poetry and fiction. The vividness and clarity of Gass's writing, the unabashed love and inimitable use of language-his startling metaphors, the sinuousness of his philosophy, the originality of his vision-make each essay a searching revelation of its subject, as well as an example of Gass's own singular artistry.

✦ Table of Contents

The doomed in their sinking --
Malcolm Lowry --
Wisconsin death trip --
Mr. Blotner, Mr. Feaster, and Mr. Faulkner --
Gertrude Stein and the geography of the sentence --
Three photos of Colette --
Proust at 100 --
Paul Valéry --
Sartre on theater --
Upright among staring fish --
The anatomy of mind --
Food and beast language --
Groping for trouts --
Carrots, noses, snow, rose, roses --
The ontology of the sentence, or How to make a world of words.

✦ Subjects

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY--Literary;Literature, Modern--History and criticism;Literature, Modern;Criticism, interpretation, etc.;Electronic books;Literature, Modern -- History and criticism;BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Literary