Nothing particularly special. Gass is not at his finest in these novellas, and the characters don't really escape being anything but the author's voice.

Baroque literature. I bounced off the ornate, attention-seeking prose style.

more than beautiful, which sometimes works in its favor, & sometimes against it. fueled on vagaries & peripatetics.

There is so much to praise within these pages. Gass is a writer far above most. Gass knows letters and sounds and how it all can dance on a page. Most of this book fucking danced!

The last story, ‘The Master of Secret Revenges’, is one I could not find my way around or in or through. I don’t know if it is good or bad. But it is one I have to spend some time thinking on.

This is the literary equivalent of an old white man looking at his own butthole in the mirror and being proud of it. Not interested.