Cartesian Sonata/Oth Novellas Pa

From the award-winning author of The Tunnel and A Temple of Texts, come four interrelated novellas that explore good and evil, action and thought, redemption and possession. The reader will encounter here a traveling saleseman who gets lost in the kitschy clutter of a small town in Illinois, a young woman in rural Iowa who loses touch with the outside world and turns to the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop as anchor, and the coming-of-age story of a develish young man named Luther (who might as well be called Lucifer). These stories are filled with the familiar style, brilliance, philosophy, and wit that fans of William Gass have come to expect and cherish.

William H. Gass-- essayist, novelist, literary critic-- was born in Fargo, North Dakota. He has been the recipient of the first PEN/Nabokov Award, the PEN/Spielvogel-Diamondstein Award for the Art of the Essay, three National Book Critic Circle Awards for Criticism, a Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, the Award for Fiction and the Medal of Merit for Fiction from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations. He lives in St. Louis.