William H. Gass

Joseph Skizzen's family fled from Austria in 1938 to London where his father disappeared, he and his family then relocated to small town Ohio and Joseph grows up to be a decent piano player with a deeply fractured sense of identity.

Middle C

Daryl Houston

Once again, Gass proves too erudite for me. I did find this book more palatable than either of the other of his novels I've read (Omsetter's Luck and The Tunnel). He is a master of the rant. I liked a lot of the prose and found much of the story worth following. On the whole, I just don't know quite what to make of it, though, or what, besides being carried along on the trip and enjoying a lot of the humor and some of the humanity of it, I ought to take from the book. I suspect the defect lies in me more than in the book. I'm glad I read it, in any case, but I wish I knew enough more about the sort of world Gass knows about to make more of the book.

Middle C

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