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The Writer in Politics
William H. Gass and Lorin Cuoco here present an edited but uncut record of the proceedings of the first international conference convened by the International Writers Center at Washington University in St. Louis. The topic—the writer in politics—was divided into three politics as material for the writers’ work ("The Writer in Politics"), politics as a threatening power over the pen ("The Writer under a Politics"), and politics as a viewpoint held by writers ("The Writer with a Politics"). Major addresses were delivered by Breyten Breytenbach, a white South African who was an early critic of apartheid serving seven years in jail before being exiled from his homeland; Nuruddin Farah, the Somali author of a number of internationally recognized novels, including the trilogy Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship, who has also suffered exile; Carolyn Forché, an American poet whose experiences as a Guggenheim Fellow in El Salvador led to her noted second book of poetry, The Country Between Us; Antonio Skarmeta, the Chilean short story writer, screen writer, and novelist whose Insurrection deals with the Nicaraguan Revolution; Luisa Valenzuela, an Argentine novelist and journalist who fled her home country in 1979 and returned a decade later after the restoration of democracy only to find remnants of the former military regime still a legitimate target for her absurdist prose; and Mario Vargas Llosa, the widely acclaimed Peruvian novelist who founded Libertad, the political party under whose banner he unsuccessfully ran for president of his country. The Writer in Politics also includes edited transcriptions of the panel discussions that followed each of the six major addresses. Panelists included Irish poet Eavan Boland, author of seven books of poetry, including In a Time of Violence; Marc Chenetier, professor of American literature at l’Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and translator of numerous American authors—including Gass—into French; Robert Coover, writer-in-residence at Brown University and author of such works as Origin of the Brunists and A Public Burning; Ron Himes, founder of the St. Louis Black Repertory Company, which produces African American and Third World playwrights; Liu Binyan, former special correspondent for China’s official newspaper and author of China’s Crisis, China’s Hope; poet Eric Pankey, whose books include Apocrypha and This Reliquary World; Anton Shammas, Palestinian Israeli author whose works include the novel Arabesque; and Richard Watson, professor of philosophy at Washington University and author of The Philosopher’s Learning French and the novel Niagara.
216 pages, Hardcover
First published May 29, 1996
About the author
William H. Gass
71 books779 followersWilliam Howard Gass was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and former philosophy professor.
Gass was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Warren, Ohio, where he attended local schools. He has described his childhood as an unhappy one, with an abusive, racist father and a passive, alcoholic mother; critics would later cite his characters as having these same qualities.
He attended Wesleyan University, then served as an Ensign in the Navy during World War II, a period he describes as perhaps the worst of his life. He earned his A.B. in philosophy from Kenyon College in 1947, then his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1954, where he studied under Max Black. His dissertation, "A Philosophical Investigation of Metaphor", was based on his training as a philosopher of language. In graduate school Gass read the work of Gertrude Stein, who influenced his writing experiments.
Gass taught at The College of Wooster, Purdue University, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a professor of philosophy (1969 - 1978) and the David May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities (1979 - 1999). His colleagues there have included the writers Stanley Elkin, Howard Nemerov (1988 Poet Laureate of the United States), and Mona Van Duyn (1992 Poet Laureate). Since 2000, Gass has been the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities.
Earning a living for himself and his family from university teaching, Gass began to publish stories that were selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of 1959, 1961, 1962, 1968 and 1980, as well as Two Hundred Years of Great American Short Stories. His first novel, Omensetter's Luck, about life in a small town in Ohio in the 1890s, was published in 1966. Critics praised his linguistic virtuosity, establishing him as an important writer of fiction. In 1968 he published In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, five stories dramatizing the theme of human isolation and the difficulty of love. Three years later Gass wrote Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, an experimental novella illustrated with photographs and typographical constructs intended to help readers free themselves from the linear conventions of narrative. He has also published several collections of essays, including On Being Blue (1976) and Finding a Form (1996). His latest work of fiction, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, was published in 1998. His work has also appeared in The Best American Essays collections of 1986, 1992, and 2000.
Gass has cited the anger he felt during his childhood as a major influence on his work, even stating that he writes "to get even." Despite his prolific output, he has said that writing is difficult for him. In fact, his epic novel The Tunnel, published in 1995, took Gass 26 years to compose. An unabridged audio version of The Tunnel was released in 2006, with Gass reading the novel himself.
When writing, Gass typically devotes enormous attention to the construction of sentences, arguing their importance as the basis of his work. His prose has been described as flashy, difficult, edgy, masterful, inventive, and musical. Steven Moore, writing in The Washington Post has called Gass "the finest prose stylist in America." Much of Gass' work is metafictional.
Gass has received many awards and honors, including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1965, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1970. He won the Pushcart Prize awards in 1976, 1983, 1987, and 1992, and in 1994 he received the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literature of the Midwest. He has teaching awards from Purdue University and Washington University; in 1968 the Chicago Tribune Award as One of the Ten Best Teachers in the Big Ten. He was a Getty Foundation Fellow in 1991-1992. He received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997; and the American Book Award for The
Gass was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Warren, Ohio, where he attended local schools. He has described his childhood as an unhappy one, with an abusive, racist father and a passive, alcoholic mother; critics would later cite his characters as having these same qualities.
He attended Wesleyan University, then served as an Ensign in the Navy during World War II, a period he describes as perhaps the worst of his life. He earned his A.B. in philosophy from Kenyon College in 1947, then his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1954, where he studied under Max Black. His dissertation, "A Philosophical Investigation of Metaphor", was based on his training as a philosopher of language. In graduate school Gass read the work of Gertrude Stein, who influenced his writing experiments.
Gass taught at The College of Wooster, Purdue University, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a professor of philosophy (1969 - 1978) and the David May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities (1979 - 1999). His colleagues there have included the writers Stanley Elkin, Howard Nemerov (1988 Poet Laureate of the United States), and Mona Van Duyn (1992 Poet Laureate). Since 2000, Gass has been the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities.
Earning a living for himself and his family from university teaching, Gass began to publish stories that were selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of 1959, 1961, 1962, 1968 and 1980, as well as Two Hundred Years of Great American Short Stories. His first novel, Omensetter's Luck, about life in a small town in Ohio in the 1890s, was published in 1966. Critics praised his linguistic virtuosity, establishing him as an important writer of fiction. In 1968 he published In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, five stories dramatizing the theme of human isolation and the difficulty of love. Three years later Gass wrote Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, an experimental novella illustrated with photographs and typographical constructs intended to help readers free themselves from the linear conventions of narrative. He has also published several collections of essays, including On Being Blue (1976) and Finding a Form (1996). His latest work of fiction, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, was published in 1998. His work has also appeared in The Best American Essays collections of 1986, 1992, and 2000.
Gass has cited the anger he felt during his childhood as a major influence on his work, even stating that he writes "to get even." Despite his prolific output, he has said that writing is difficult for him. In fact, his epic novel The Tunnel, published in 1995, took Gass 26 years to compose. An unabridged audio version of The Tunnel was released in 2006, with Gass reading the novel himself.
When writing, Gass typically devotes enormous attention to the construction of sentences, arguing their importance as the basis of his work. His prose has been described as flashy, difficult, edgy, masterful, inventive, and musical. Steven Moore, writing in The Washington Post has called Gass "the finest prose stylist in America." Much of Gass' work is metafictional.
Gass has received many awards and honors, including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1965, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1970. He won the Pushcart Prize awards in 1976, 1983, 1987, and 1992, and in 1994 he received the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literature of the Midwest. He has teaching awards from Purdue University and Washington University; in 1968 the Chicago Tribune Award as One of the Ten Best Teachers in the Big Ten. He was a Getty Foundation Fellow in 1991-1992. He received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997; and the American Book Award for The
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December 7, 2008
William H Gass' intro essay is fuggin brilliant...I'd pull out some gorgeously written, learned, witty quotes but I only have one on hand and its not from him.
The whole book is pretty great: A provocative and civil round table discussion of writers IN politics, WITH politics, and UNDER politics...people from Argentina, Chile, South Africa, China, Ireland, the U.S, France, Somalia...presenting their own papers and commenting on others' insights. Much quotability results...
Hear ye, hear ye:
"The State is a blind mirror that will steal your face...The nature of man is bestial, the concept of progress futile and redundant, but struggle for decency continues. There will always be history because there will always be dreaming, and therefore conflict. No gain is permanent, and permanence is not a gain either. It is the walking that life is all about; the goal is only a certain dimension or configuration of absence that will help to elicit activity. Knowing meaning is a good way of preparing the unknowing. To tell a story is to activate a dream.
I must keep running after myself so as to not lose sight of the dark light of creativeness: that is, subverting the hegemony, unhinging the seemingly unstoppable process of accretion and accumulation, rattling the skeleton and the empty bowl of the mind, taunting that powdered death called respectability, keeping the cracks whistling, fighting for revolution against politics. Aesthetics and ethics cannot be separated.
It is important to take responsibility for the story: Imagination is politics. He who travels alone, travels fastest, but in the company of friends you go further...."
-Breyten Breytenbach
I suspect that this one's a little bit obscure. I actually found it in a library while looking for something else entirely. I think it was stacked incorrectly, I don't know. But this is definitely recommended for anyone obsessed with literature and politics, and the intersection between the two, who is interested in world histories of resistance and literary engagement...in a word, excellent!
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review