Briefly noted.(four books)(Brief Article)

Publication: The New Yorker

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Tests of Time, by William H. Gass (Knopf; $25). In this collection of fourteen essays, Gass ranges widely across the cultural landscape, offering appreciations of Italo Calvino and Peter Handke, a keen interrogation of the idea of the masterpiece, and a whimsical look at the virtues and vices of lists. Throughout, he keeps returning to what has always been his main theme: the primacy of aesthetic experience. For him, literature matters not because it may be socially or politically valuable but because a well-made fiction is a good in and...

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