February 29,2012 When I first read William Gay’s writing in the pages of The Oxford American about ten years ago, it was like I’d won some kind of lottery. I mean this. It was like first reading Faulkner or O’Connor or Welty or Roth or Virginia Woolf, even. There was a wholeheartedness on the page—an urgency and a hard-won authority, like lemons in frothy water. And there was an outright courage, too—a plucky refusal to flinch. Even where you could hear the McCarthy and the Faulkner—just a little bit, just here and there—there was something other there, something fully warranted and actual, hilarious and heartbreaking. Whatever-it-was was dangerous, too, it seemed like, and a bit fatal.
Read moreAn Urgency and a Hard-Won Authority
William Gay knew everything about the will—the iron will—and human longing, too—and how ferocious these can be inside of us, and how important they are to heed
