Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts
*Starred Review* The pleasures in Gass’ (A Temple of Texts, 2006) new powerhouse essay collection are heady, varied, and many. Now in his late eighties, the philosopher-writer is more frolicsome than ever in his fathoms-deep erudition and purring, stalking, and fencing prose. Gass writes so cogently, robustly, and puckishly about literary, metaphysical, and moral matters because he knows his subjects down to their subatomic particles. He happily reports that he “relished” the diagramming of sentences as a grade-school student, hence his dynamic lectures-become-essays on sentence structure, the anatomy and history of the metaphor, and Platonic forms. Having profoundly internalized Kafka’s work and life, Gass imagines Kafka writing a memoir-from-beyond, in which he corrects biographical misperceptions. Further musings on the pitfalls of literary biography engender a vivid portrait of Katherine Anne Porter and an exultantly expert solution to all the speculation about Henry James’ sexuality. Gass is mischievously insurgent in “Lust,” reordering our definitions of vice and virtue. A set of piquant personal essays includes reflections on the Fourth of July, tyranny and freedom of expression, and “Slices of Life in a Library,” a charmingly comic homage to the joys and misdemeanors of passionate reading. The brainy, ethical, artistic, and ebullient fun Gass has in this brimming volume will exalt every ardent reader. --Donna Seaman