Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Gass, William H. - Charles Caramello (essay date 1983)

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Charles Caramello (essay date 1983)

SOURCE: “Fleshing Out Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife,” in Silverless Mirrors: Book, Self, and Postmodern American Fiction, Tallahassee, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1983, pp. 97-111.

[In the following essay, Caramello examines Gass's postmodern ambivalence toward authority, textuality, and the deconstruction of reality in Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife.]

If dreams are made of imagination, I'm not afraid of my own creation.

Rodgers and Hart, “Isn't It Romantic?”

But though he had breathed heavily, groaned as if ecstatic, what he'd really felt throughout was an odd detachment, as though someone else were Master.

John Barth, “Lost in the Funhouse”

William H. Gass calls a brief encounter with Wittgenstein “the most important intellectual experience of my life”;¹ he is acidic on the topic of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Richard J. Schneider (review date Winter 1979-1980)
   2. Charles Caramello (essay date 1983)
   3. Charlotte Byrd Hadella (essay date Fall 1988)
   4. Kevin J. H. Dettmar (essay date Fall 1991)
   5. Reginald Dyck (essay date Fall 1991)
   6. Arthur M. Saltzman (essay date Fall 1991)
   7. Philip Stevick (essay date Fall 1991)
   8. Robert Kelly (review date 26 February 1995)
   9. Merle Rubin (review date 6 March 1995)
   10. Michael Dirda (review date 12 March 1995)
   11. Michael Silverblatt (review date 19 March 1995)
   12. John Leonard (review date 20 March 1995)
   13. Steven Moore (review date Spring 1995)
   14. Gary Percesepe (review date Summer 1995)
   15. Louis Menand (review date 13 July 1995)
   16. Jim Lewis (review date February 1997)
   17. Maureen Howard (review date 9 March 1997)
   18. John O'Brien (review date Spring 1997)
   19. Marcus Klein (essay date Summer 1997)
   20. Kenneth Haynes (review date Fall 1997)
   21. Arthur Saltzman (review date Fall 1998)
   22. James Wood (review date 1 November 1998)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright