In 1982, writing about Emerson, William H. Gass offered this description of the essay: “The essay is unhurried . . . it browses among books; it enjoys an idea like a fine wine; it thumbs through things. It turns round and round upon its topic, exposing this aspect and then that; proposing possibilities, reciting opinions, disposing of prejudice and even of the simple truth itself.’’
Gass’s own essays turn round and round: It’s not always clear how one paragraph follows from the last, and intriguing premises can become swamped by metaphor. Take, for instance, the second paragraph of “Reading Proust,’’ from Gass’s new collection, “Life Sentences.’’ “When André Gide first looked into ‘Swann’s Way,’ ’’ Gass writes, “it must have seemed a stack of sheets like any other, so his mind would not have been filled with the kind of foreboding that faces’’ - whom? Proust’s readers today? No. - “the climber of a mountain while still in the foothills looking up at his goal, a blanched peak whose slopes are already dotted with many a failed ambition.’’
