In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass
"In the Heart of the Heart of the Country" by William H. Gass is a modernist work that diverges from traditional narrative forms, presenting itself as a collection of thirty-six interconnected prose poems. Set in a small Midwestern town, the story is narrated in the first person by a college teacher and poet who reflects on his life and experiences. The narrative explores the complexities of the narrator's emotional landscape, notably his struggles with love, loss, and isolation. Each section is linked to the narrator's perceptions and memories, rather than following a linear plot, which can lead to a sense of disconnection for readers.
The titles of the sections range from the straightforward to the more introspective, often hinting at the possessions and past experiences of the narrator. While superficially focusing on various topics, such as politics and local culture, the content frequently strays from these subjects, revealing deeper layers of the narrator's self-doubt and despair. Through his reflections, the narrator grapples with a sense of entrapment in his own life, ultimately conveying a poignant exploration of aging and the defeat of personal aspirations. The work invites readers to consider the intricate relationship between place, memory, and identity, while also challenging conventional narrative expectations.
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In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass
First published: 1967
Type of plot: Antistory
Time of work: The 1960's
Locale: A small town in Indiana
Principal Characters:
The narrator , a self-proclaimed poet and a college teacher who has lost his loverMrs. Desmond , an elderly lady who often visits himBilly Holsclaw , an elderly man who lives near himUncle Halley , an elderly man who shares his collection with the narratorMr. Tick , the narrator's cat, which the narrator envies
The Story
Following the modernist tradition of elimination of traditional narrative line, this story could be loosely described as a series of thirty-six prose poems, repetitious in subject and title, connected only by two devices—the setting (a small midwestern town) and the first-person narrator. The shorter titles within the story at first glance seem quite straightforward: abstract, factual, almost guidebook dull. The longer titles tend to emphasize possessions of the narrator: "My House, This Place and Body."
Closer inspection, however, reveals that the content of a given section may have only a tenuous connection with the title. In the "Politics" section, only five lines refer to the Cuban Revolution; the rest of the section attempts an extended and overstrained comparison of love and politics, which veers entirely out of control. At one time, the narrator may have only a sentence or two to say about his ostensible subject of the moment; at another, several paragraphs or pages. Nor do the topics recur in any definite pattern, but in an almost obsessively arbitrary one. In addition, the narrator's implied objectivity often slips away, giving the reader several different versions of a place or a character. In short, if the reader does not fairly quickly grasp that the real story is the self-revelation of the narrator, he or she will soon be floundering amid seemingly unconnected, repetitious, or even contradictory data. Nothing much actually happens in the present tense of the story.
From the multiple sections, however, a relatively old-fashioned plot line emerges, introduced in the last line of the first paragraph: "And I am in retirement from love." Rearranged in a linear fashion, the action preceding the beginning of this story is fairly simple. The first-person narrator, a forty-one-year-old college teacher and self-proclaimed poet, came to B——, Indiana, full of the hope of establishing a new beginning for himself: a new job, new companions, a new home, and new roots—perhaps, he suggests, even a new youth. He also found a new lover, a young, tomboyish girl with whom he believed that he had escaped from his old routines. Soon, however, it is she who escapes, leaving both him and the Midwest far behind.
As the story begins, he is reminiscing about the failure of all of his hopes, especially his lost love, and occasionally trying to pull himself together, to get back to his poetry, to understand his sense of being trapped in coldness, isolation, and fragmentation. He tries to give an objective examination of the town—its businesses, clubs, politics, churches, schools, some of its inhabitants, the land, and the seasonal cycles of the weather. However, he reveals much more about himself than he ever understands or intends.
Living totally within himself, looking at nature through windows or from platforms, and running from actual encounters with real people and real problems, this narrator egotistically and sentimentally wallows in self-pity, coloring every piece of data with the despairing, cold grayness of his own mind and heart. Lacking in self-discipline and willpower, he asserts that he "cannot pull himself together." He acknowledges that in B—— he has not been able to find a new youth; he has merely confirmed his advancing age. His poetry, which he considers only a "physical caress," will die as his senses diminish until death.
Bibliography
Bellamy, Joe David, ed. The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974.
Hix, H. L. Understanding William H. Gass. Columbia: University Press of South Carolina, 2002.
Holloway, Watson L. William Gass. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
McCaffery, Larry. The Metafictional Muse: The Work of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, and William H. Gass. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982.
Saltzman, Arthur M. The Fiction of William Gass: The Consolation of Language. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985.
Unsworth, John. "Against the Grain: Theory and Practice in the Work of William H. Gass." Arizona Quarterly 48, no. 1 (Spring, 1992).
Vidal, Gore. Matters of Fact and Fiction: Essays, 1973-1976. New York: Random House, 1977.