"A dazzling compendium of fiction and literary essays…a banquet…joyous…superb." -Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal. From the author of The Tunnel.

This definitive collection brings together the finest fiction and essays of William Gass, one of America's most celebrated stylists. Spanning his entire career, it offers both a rich introduction for new readers and an essential volume for longtime admirers.

Inside, you'll find Gass's masterful short fiction, including the acclaimed novellas In Camera and In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, alongside incisive essays on literary giants such as Plato, Joyce, Stein, and Beckett. With selections from his landmark novel The Tunnel and essays that reveal the craft behind great writing, this volume showcases Gass at his most inventive and insightful.

Elegant, challenging, and deeply rewarding, this collection is ideal for readers, writers, and anyone who wants to experience, and better understand, the power of language at its highest level.

William H. Gass was born in Fargo, North Dakota. He is the author of seven works of fiction, nine books of essays, and a book of conversations. Gass was a professor of philosophy at Washington University. For most of his life he lived in St. Louis, Missouri, with his wife, the architect Mary Gass. William Gass died in 2017.

Throughout his career, William Gass relentlessly pushed at the boundaries of language, celebrating the music of the sentence and the aesthetics of the written word. Now, the best and most important of his work is collected in one volume. There are essays on Plato, Hobbes, James, Joyce, Beckett, Stein, Gaddis, Sterne, Ford Madox Ford, Thomas Mann. There are pieces that examine the inner workings of writing. There is his masterful short fiction, from the perfectly crafted novella "In Camera" to the mythical "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country." And there are excerpts from his novels, including his magnum opus, The Tunnel. Taken together, this collection is a peerless, essential celebration of literature-and an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to understand how great writing works.