What I Had Discovered Is That Every Space Contains More Space Than the Space It Contains, or: Born One-Hundred Years Ago Today

William Gass born ONE HUNDRED years ago today This is the traditional William Gass birthday post:

from The Tunnel:

The other large carton unpacked in the same way - box into box - but the feeling it gave me was the opposite of that suggested by the endless nest of Russians dollies it otherwise resembled, for what I was opening was a den of spaces which now covered the floor near my feet. It was plain that every ten-by-ten-by eight container contained cubes which were nine by nine by seven, and eight by eight by six, and seven by seven by five, and so on down to three by three by two, as well as many smaller, thinly sided one at every interval in between, so that out of one box a million more might multiply, confirming Zeno's view, although at that age, with an unfurnished mind, I couldn't have known of his paradoxes let alone have been able to describe one with any succinctness. What I had discovered is that every space contains more space than the space it contains.

That passage reminds me what I'm trying to get at here (2020: everywhere) though of course Gass does it better (2020: considering a WIHDITESCMSTTSIC tattoo first before the IHTWTGADTLWLIPTD tattoo)

More Gass here from here

• 
  
• William Gass' The Art of Self.
• You have to be grimly determined.
• Gass eviscerates Updike.
• The Radical Criticism of William Gass.
• Till the Knowing Ends.
• William Gass, painted by Philip Guston.

• Morton Feldman's For Philip Guston.
• On On Being Blue.
• 1977 Gass interview. 
• 2005 Gass interview.
• 2013 Gass interview.
• William Gass on postmodernism (h/t Ed for the youtube at top too).
• On Middle C.
• If you know of more links to add, and give the fuck, please send them.
• From Omensetter's Luck: When Harry Pimber walks into the woods and names the trees (via):

From The Tunnel, read out loud if you can, if you want:

Also too:

Excerpt from The Tunnel
William Gass

I built, of blocks, a town three hundred thousand strong, whose avenues were paved with a wine-colored rug and decorated by large leaves outlined inappropriately in orange, and on this leafage I'd often park my Tootsie Toy trucks, as if on pads of camouflage, waiting their deployment against catastrophes which included alien invasions, internal treachery, and world war. It was always my intention, and my conceit, to use up, in the town's construction, every toy I possessed: my electronic train, of course, the Lincoln Logs, old kindergarten blocks—their deeply incised letters always a problem—the Erector set, every lead soldier that would stand (broken ones were sent to the hospital), my impressive array of cars, motorcycles, tanks, and trucks—some with trailers, some transporting gas, some tows, some dumps—and my squadrons of planes, my fleet of ships, my big and little guns, an undersized group of parachute people (looking as if one should always imagine them high in the sky, hanging from threads), my silversided submarines, along with assorted RR signs, poles bearing flags, prefab houses with faces pasted in their windows, small boxes of a dozen variously useful kinds, strips of blue cloth for streams and rivers, and glass jars for town water towers, or, in a pinch, jails. In time, the armies, the citizens, even the streets would divide: loyalties, friendships, certainties, would be undermined, the city would be shaken by strife; and marbles would rain down from formerly friendly planes, steeples would topple onto cars, and shellfire would soon throw aggie holes through homes, soldiers would die accompanied by my groans, and ragged bands of refugees would flee toward mountain caves and other chairs and tables.