“I imagine this book was a place he came to, a place where he came to express his writerly joy over the absurdity of life, especially life in the rural south, and also to ponder his particular questions about the balance between good and evil, and the culpability of the good”: Nathan Poole on William Gay’s posthumous novel.
Novelist William Gay, who died late last month at the age of seventy, was the topic of several conversations I had at AWP this year. Most of the talks centered on Gay’s work, which was sublime, or his soul, which was sweet; we fond remember-ers would all have a sip of beer and nod somberly. He’ll be missed, we’d say. What else can you do? But sitting here today, at my post-AWP desk, in the quiet of my office full of books and stacks of revisions that need entering, I’m thinking of William Gay again. I only met him a […]
