<P>Winner of the 2007 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, <i>A Temple of Texts</i> 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.</P><P></P><P>"No one is better than William H. Gass at communicating the sublime and rapturous excitement of reading." - <i>Washington Post</i></P><P>"Gass shares his lifelong love affair with books as well as his insights into the nature of humankind, religion, and art." - <i>Library Journal</i></P><P>"[Gass's] pieces pack a punch of intoxication: they are exhilarating, stimulating, invigorating, and they can make you feel greater and wiser than you really are." - Stephen Schenkenberg</P>