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Title:In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories
Author:William H. Gass
Book Format:Paperback
Book Edition:First Edition
Pages:Pages: 240 pages
Published:April 1st 2006 by David R. Godine Publisher (first published 1968)
Categories:Short Stories. Fiction. Literature. American. 20th Century. Classics. Literary Fiction
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In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories Paperback | Pages: 240 pages
Rating: 3.99 | 2108 Users | 193 Reviews

Chronicle As Books In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories

IN THIS SUITE of five short pieces -- one of the unqualified literary masterpieces of the American 1960s -- William Gass finds five beautiful forms in which to explore the signature theme of his fiction: the solitary soul’s poignant, conflicted, and doomed pursuit of love and community. In their obsessions, Gass’s Midwestern dreamers are like the "grotesques" of Sherwood Anderson, but in their hyper-linguistic streams of consciousness, they are the match for Joyce’s Dubliners.

First published in 1968, this book begins with a beguiling thirty-three page essay and has five fictions: the celebrated novella "The Pedersen Kid," "Mrs. Mean," "Icicles," "Order of Insects," and the title story.



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Original Title: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories
ISBN: 0879233745 (ISBN13: 9780879233747)
Edition Language: English


Rating Based On Books In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories
Ratings: 3.99 From 2108 Users | 193 Reviews

Assessment Based On Books In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories
So far: Prologue=yes. Icicles=no. I am saving the Pederson Kid and the title story for last. Long weekend coming, maybe Mrs. Mean?Update: I caved and read the last two first. The title story and "Order of Insects" have both moved me back into my Gass love. Perhaps I should give "Icicles" another chance? I wasn't really expecting it when it happened, the problem could be mean. Still "Mrs. Mean" and "The Pedersen Kid" left to go. Final update: not quite as good as Middle C, but worth reading

I don't know for literary movements, so I don't know what this is called. I know that few people can write an English sentence with as much brilliance as William H. Gass. And he's plenty inventive. He is not formulaic. He gives us here five stories, each a remarkably different slice of 20th Century Midwestern America. They are about Place:In the Midwest, around the lower Lakes, the sky in winter is heavy and close, and it is a rare day, a day to remark on, when the sky lifts and allows the heart

The Pedersen Kid in the strange way reminded me of Erskine Caldwell.Mrs. Mean is a suburban fabliau in John Cheevers style but more pessimistic than ironic.Recently, while Ive been loitering at the end of the alley, taking my last look around, Ive felt Ive mixed up all my starts and endings, that the future is over and the past has just begun.Icicles is a dreary office tale: if ones life is absolutely empty then icicles become a spectacular event a bit of Donald Barthelme, probably.Order of



Starting today/tonight perhaps. My library hardbound cover is not represented here. Coincidentally I just finished reading the title story in R. Ford's Granta American Short story collection. This experience tells me it could be a problem to finish this book. The title story is mostly prose-poetry and to call it a story is a stretch. It's a kind of a story I guess. Tuesday... I finally got into it this morning with the opening of "The Pederson Kid". Grim yet lyrical... Kind of reminds me of

Gass is an evocative writer, describing people, their habits, the weather, small towns in such detail and with real attention to the range of elements that make up the thing that he is trying to narrate. As such, it is often introspective prose and tends to concentrate on minutiae of daily life. There is often also an undercurrent of threat or uncertainty to these stories which really made me question what exactly I was reading about and how much I really knew about the characters being

To be honest, I was legit not impressed with the opening story -- which contained the germ of something great -- but I adored the rest. Gass was far and away the most lyrical of the big-dick American postmodernists of the mid-20th Century, and even at his most venomous in The Tunnel, he could still manage a serene lyricism matched by few other American writers. That being said, perhaps I fucked up by reading The Tunnel before any other Gass, and everything seems to only exist in its shadow --