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Williamgass.jpg
Image:williamgass.jpg
William Gass (b. 1924) was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Soon after his birth his family moved to Warren, Ohio, where he attended local schools. After service as an ensign in the navy during World War II, he graduated from Kenyon College and went on to earn a doctorate in philosophy from Cornell University in 1954. His dissertation, "A Philosophical Investigation of Metaphor," was based on his training as a philosopher of language. In graduate school Gass read the work of Gertrude Stein, who influenced his writing experiments.
Earning a living for himself and his family from university teaching, Gass began to publish stories that were selected for inclusion in The Best American Stories of 1959, 1961, and 1962. In 1966 his first novel, Omensetter's Luck, about life in an Ohio small town in the 1890s, appeared. Critics praised his linguistic virtuosity, establishing Gass as an important writer of fiction. In 1968 he published In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, five stories dramatizing the theme of human isolation and the difficulty of love. Three years later Gass wrote Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, an experimental novella illustrated with photographs and typographical constructs intended to help readers free themselves from the linear conventions of narrative. He has also published several collections of essays, including On Being Blue (1976) and Finding a Form (1996). His latest work, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, was published in 1998.
For the past twenty years he has been the David May Distinguished Professor in Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.
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