SOURCE: “Where Words Dwell Adored: An Introduction to William Gass,” in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 7-14.

In the following essay, Saltzman provides an overview of Gass's postmodern linguistic techniques and theoretical perspective.

William Gass builds sentences, sentences that are their own best excuse for being, sentences that seduce, like a bold, new Annunciation, through the ear. They can be as delicately suspended as a bridge of web spun by the spider that serves as metaphor for the artist in Omensetter's Luck; or they can be arches of triumph, solid and lasting and right as pillars set in concrete; or they can lie quietly, feeding and fattening on our attention before we notice that we are noticing their tug at the imagination.

Marooned in their own minds, Gass's protagonists find in sentences their only reliable company, and the sentences they discover are sensitive to their...