William H. Gass, acclaimed author, dies at 93

ST. LOUIS (AP) — William H. Gass, a proudly postmodern author who valued form and language more than literary conventions like plot and character and who had a broad influence on other experimental writers of the 1960s, ’70s and beyond, died on Wednesday in St. Louis. He was 93.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his wife, Mary Henderson Gass, said. He lived in St. Louis, where he taught at Washington University for 30 years and was an emeritus professor at his death.

Mr. Gass was widely credited with coining the term “metafiction” to describe writing in which the author is part of the story. He himself was one of the form’s foremost practitioners.

His writing reflected his knowledge of philosophy and his academic background, but it also included irreverent and often bawdy limericks. He used ordinary words to great effect, as when he described a character as having “a dab of the dizzies,” but it was his metaphors (which he said came to him in “squadrons”), his rhythms and the effort he put into each sentence that made him the object of other writers’ admiration.

Sentences have souls, he explained in an essay, and if they were good enough “it would be a crime on the world’s part to let them die.” In an ideal sentence, he said, the words choose to be there. Sometimes more than 300 words chose to be in a Gass sentence, in which clauses, connected by semicolons, were strung out like railroad cars.