An Approach to Omensetter's Luck: A First Novel by William H. Gass

Abstract

In my now two-year search to discover what William Gass was talking about in his novel Omensetter's Luck, I have tried to refer myself to every book review written about Omensetter's Luck . No formal criticism, to my knowledge, has ever been published beyond these reviews, except by William Gass himself . In 1966 Gass wrote a letter to the publisher of Omensetter's Luck in an attempt to give the man some idea of what the book was about so that he might put something relevant on the jacket cover . This letter was later published in a collection of essays by contemporary novelists on their novels. Thus the only aid I have found to understanding William Gass' book is William Gass himself, and his scattered literary essays and reviews . I have read practically everything printed by Gass and although this has not made me any sort of exhaustive Gass scholar, I do believe that everything Gass has ever written about, whether in his essays, reviews, or short stories, is also in Omensetter's Luck.