The World Within the Word
William Gass
[Dalkey Archive Press]
The reviewer approached Gass’s The World Within The Word with an initial slanted reluctance; collections of essays and reviews can be cobbled-together affairs, smacking of phoney academic knowledge. This reluctance rapidly morphed into the fervour of the recent convert mouthing off in his sputtering earnestness, trying so hard not to shout. Touch of Gass? This is class! The lines lengthen, the pulse accelerates and the prose glows like the best of stage shows, yet stays always steady and steely; a calm and throbbing lyricism that we know to be hard-won from the author’s personal reflections, interspersed throughout. Indeed, the book opens with a moving account of the miseries of Gass’ mother, a narrative which is subtly multiplied to describe the collection’s other sad lives self-ended.
Gass’ pieces describe the works and lives of weighty names – Proust, Plath, Faulkner, and Stein are worthy subjects, finely rendered. So many stunning passages that cry for quotation. Just one, lulling and rhythmic: “The alcoholic trance is not just a haze… One arrives in the garden again, at nursery time, when the gentle animals are fed and in all the world there are only toys.” But it’s the last image of all that chills the most – the horrified face of Malcolm Lowry’s fictional consul, hauntingly embodied in all its flabby detail. Leave aside a day to read this – then devour it all the night before.
Words: Sam Coll
