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>>Erik: What did your honors thesis advisor, William Gass, teach you about clarity of thought
and focus?
>>Scott: It was an amazing opportunity to work with, really a lion, of American literature.
Unbelievable author, I`d read some of his stuff, and of course his fiction is hard to
read and thorny and packed with metaphor and I had a lot of thoughts and preconceptions
of what this guy might actually be like when I was taking his philosophy and literature
class my junior year, but it turned out, we`d get to see him lecture on Kafka, or the poetry
of Rilke and he was able to take this stuff and explain it with such an amazing clarity
that none of us in the class whether we were undergraduates or graduate students would
have been able to see on our own. So I hit him up to advise me on my honor`s thesis and
he was grateful. And he says oh yeah, sure I think it`ll be fun. Just the nicest guy.
There`s a reason he lives in the Midwest. He belongs in a place like that. Just so genuine
and I was so appreciative that he would take the time between winning major literary awards
to help me out and I got to work with him personally. And when I did, it made the process
of writing, what normally would be a difficult, a year long philosophy and literature project,
it made it a joy. It made it something that was not intimidating at all. It was really
inspiring to wake up in the middle of the night with all these things in my head and
then go and talk with him about it.