Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Gass, William H. - James Wood (review date 1 November 1998)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

James Wood (review date 1 November 1998)

SOURCE: “Wrestling with God,” in New York Times Book Review, November 1, 1998, p. 9.

[In the following review, Wood offers positive evaluation of Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, though notes contradictions and shortcomings in the work.]

William Gass is the philosopher-novelist who wants to scramble our p's and q's. For many years, in both essays and novels, he has fought what he sees as the unthinking realism of American fiction. Instead of the blank essences of traditional fiction, he wants the subtle absences of the nouveau roman: instead of characters, he organizes his fictions around “symbolic centers”; instead of the architecture of plot, he attends to the fabric of form; instead of the management of reality, he prefers to liberate the sentence. The writer's task is not to make the reader believe in a world: Gass has argued that “one of the most petty of human...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

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