A Temple of Texts: Essays

A Temple of Texts shows William Gass to be an excellent reader, with diverse and idiosyncratic tastes: Colette, Coover, Dickens, Ford, Henry James, Stanley Elkin, William Gaddis, Ernesto Sabato, Gertrude Stein, John Hawkes, and Rilke. (“The healthy mind goes everywhere.") His essays are a bit meandering, and the flourishes in his prose too often obscure rather than enlighten, but the book is nonetheless an outstanding reference guide for what to read next.