<i>In the Heart of the Heart of the Country</i> is vintage William H. Gass: two novellas and three short stories, set in the Midwest, exhibiting Gass’s characteristic and wildly original verbal brilliance and philosophical acuity. The volume includes <i>The Pedersen Kid,</i> a story originally published a few years before the 1965 publication of Gass’s first novel <i>Omensetter’s Luck</i>.<br><br>Words populate these stories, as squirming, regal, and unexpected as the roaches, boys, icicles, neighbors, neuroses, and properties they describe. No matter how strange or estranged the human consciousness directing each symphony of words, his or her fear, delight, and disgust is uncanny and familiar.