William Gass’ Fifty Literary Pillars

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A Temple of Texts: Essays (Book), 50 Books

Winner of the 2007 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, "A Temple of Texts" is the latest critical collection from one of America's greatest essayists and novelists. Here, William H. Gass pays homage to the readerly side of the literary experience by turning his critical sensibility upon all the books that shaped his own development as a reader, writer, and human being. With essays on figures ranging from William Shakespeare and Gertrude Stein to Flann O'Brien and Robert Burton, Gass creates a "temple" of readerly devotion, a collection of critical explorations as brilliant and incisive as readers have come to expect from this literary master, but also a surprisingly personal window into the author's own literary development.

This list was originally published in 2007 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
11511 Timaeus Plato -360 Greek Ancient greek
400 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
596 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
344 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
457 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
367 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein 1921 Austrian German
6602 The Poetics Of Space Gaston Bachelard 1958 French French
9840 Biographia Literaria Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1817 British English
13327 Eupalinos, Or The Architect Paul Valéry 1921 French French
547 Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory 1485 British Middle english
3632 Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial Sir Thomas Browne 1658 British English
52 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
1187 A Writer's Diary Virginia Woolf 1953 British English
382 Parade's End Ford Madox Ford 1924 British English
1064 Antony And Cleopatra William Shakespeare 1606 British English
10581 The Alchemist Ben Jonson 1610 British English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
258 Finnegans Wake James Joyce 1939 Irish English
355 At Swim Two-Birds Flann O'Brien 1939 Irish English
6649 How It Is Samuel Beckett 1961 Irish French
13828 First Love And Other Shorts Samuel Beckett 1970 French French
1831 Paradiso José Lezama Lima 1966 Cuban Spanish
353 Hopscotch Julio Cortazar 1963 Argentinian Spanish
311 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
294 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
592 The Sleepwalkers Hermann Broch 1932 Austrian German
147 Confessions of Zeno Italo Svevo 1923 Italian Italian
1869 The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters Gustave Flaubert 1921 French French
491 Bouvard et Pécuchet Gustave Flaubert 1881 French French
41 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
13327 Break Of Day Colette 1928 French French
1236 The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne John Donne 1952 British English
8714 Hymns And Fragments Freidrich Hölderlin 1984 German German
1304 Collected Poems Stéphane Mallarmé 1887 French French
5382 Personae Ezra Pound 1909 American English
1507 The Tower William Butler Yeats 1928 Irish English
13327 Harmonium Wallace Stevens 1923 American English
374 The Golden Bowl Henry James 1904 American English
5273 The Complete Notebooks Of Henry James Henry James 1987 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
2249 Pale Horse, Pale Rider Katherine Anne Porter 1939 American English
1154 Three Lives Gertrude Stein 1909 American English
559 The Recognitions William Gaddis 1955 American English
10800 The Lime Twig John Hawkes 1961 American English
396 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910 German German
371 The Duino Elegies Rainer Maria Rilke 1923 German German
13327 Sonnets To Orpheus Rainer Maria Rilke 1923 German German
1436 Letters to a Young Poet Rainer Maria Rilke 1929 Austrian German
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German