Prize-Winning Author-Critic William Gass Dead at 93

[Mark Kohut]

Two further two-bit reflections on the obits: This
"Influenced by Wittgenstein, Gass was taken by the aesthetics of language,
how a word looked and sounded as opposed to what it meant."

Wittgenstein spent his WHOLE LIFE on what a word meant, so to speak and
emphasize, ....he might be said to have been in search of
aesthetics......but the "aesthetics of language", NO. His favorite writers
were those with plain-speaking moral meaning--like the later Tolstoy
and analogously, Westerns (as movies) because good guys and bad guys were
as clear as a gunshot.

One must say, it would seem, that Gass's art was willfully against the "art
of Witt's tastes" however much he used Wittgenstein in his writing and
thinking---esp in the essays.

And, I just read a great line from that Robert Kelley quoted in the Times'
obit. Poet, yes, but also a short story-and maybe even a novel- writer,
dunno.  ....Paraphrase: Every line in a great book, read right, is
infinite. THAT is a Gassian remark, if not just Gass.

On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 7:45 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dee goes way back in "understanding" and commenting on Gass. There is an
> Isabelle Dee Wedemeyer who is or was
> a literary agent, but not Gass's in his later years from what I can
> superficially determine.
>
> As we know, obituaries of such famous people get written years, sometimes
> decades before the end--esp when you live to 93.
>
> My guess, out of my semi-experienced ass, is that Ms Wedemeyer was at one
> time his agent (doubtful though) and/or a writer on literary writers and
> topics
> at the NYTimes in 1999 at least. A- and was asked to write this sometime
> after, not long after--with revisions always happening before the end.
>
> In 1999 William woudda been 75.....check out Bellow's fine bit of writing
> about getting called by the Times re HIS obituary.
> So, Gass hisself probably sold you on retrying The Tunnel, which I could
> never even enter in my tunnelized life then. And untried since.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/13/books/still-at-war-new-
> fiction-still-has-a-champion.html
>
> On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 4:53 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Who the heck is Dee Wedemeyer? She just singlehandednly got me to break
>> out The Tunnel again.
>>
>> J
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 3:27 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/obituaries/william-h-gass
>>> -acclaimed-postmodern-author-dies-at-93.html?rref=collection
>>> %2Fsectioncollection%2Fobituaries&action=click&contentCollec
>>> tion=obituaries&region=rank&module=package&version=highlight
>>> s&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=1
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 12:24 PM, etb <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/missouri/articles/20
>>>> 17-12-07/prize-winning-author-critic-william-gass-dead-at-93
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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