Tests of Time

About this book

In these fourteen witty and elegant essays William Gass (the finest prose stylist in AmericaSteven Moore Washington Post) writes about writing reading culture history politics and public opinion. In the first of three parts Gass addresses literary matters and writers and contemplates among other things: the nature of narrative and its philosophical implications; experimental fiction and its importance; literary lists (including the currently controversial canon of western literature) and their use. In part two Gass looks at social and political contretemps: the extent and cost of political influences on writers; the First Amendment the Fatwa and Salman Rushdie; our view of Germany as in How German are we? Finally Gass gives us a celebration of Flaubert and considers the problems of writing history. Tests of Time is William Gass at his most dazzling. It is a high-wire act of thinking and writing that serves up what Vladimir Nabokov called an indescribable tingle of the spine.