fr Willie Master’s Lonesome Wife (via Brooklyn Rail)

An Interview with William Gass (via Alive).

In another life, you’d be:
There isn’t any other life, but I’m sure if there were, I would be a surprise to myself.

What is your current obsession?
You can’t have a current obsession. If it hasn’t been around for years it isn’t an obsession.

What is your favorite word?
Form.

What is your least favorite word?
Republican.

What do you want to do before you die?
It’s always for me to finish my current books but there are always more coming along.

Personal hero:
If you find that your hero doesn’t have clay feet, then they’ll have clay elbows. I don’t have a personal hero, but I find heroic qualities in women like Gertrude Stein.

If you could have a conversation with your younger self, what would you say?
Get older. Youth is wasted on the young.

Read the rest here.

Posting this today because none of my Canadian students have ever heard of William Gass. Amazing, but I guess not so amazing given that they’ve not heard of many writers…and one cannot keep up with the number of writers…in any case. I was talking about In The Heart of The Heart of The Country which I now cannot find to offer up a little excerpt from so the above excerpt will have to do for the moment.