While agreeing with critics who label Gass's novels and stories metafiction, he contends that to stop the exploration there would be to miss a complete appreciation of the novelist. Hix demonstrates instead how Gass's writings both break and follow tradition - as metafiction belonging to the company of works by John Barth but also as moral fiction belonging to the long American tradition that includes The Scarlet Letter and To Kill a Mockingbird."--BOOK JACKET.