The Tunnel

Consider that William Gass created this masterpiece over roughly the same time frame it takes to pay off the average mortgage -- 652 pages in 30 years. One has to respect such care in crafting The Tunnel. How many times was this draft edited to create in essence a final draft written at the plodding, prodding pace of 22 pages per annum? Gass took more time crafting The Tunnel than Joyce did Ulysses. And it shows. The syntax is not of this world. His use of metaphor is off the charts in its creativity. There are worlds, even galaxies, in his words. The writing is sheer poetry in places -- a pure joy to read. He is honest, pithy, probing, penetrating and very often hilarious in his Notes from Underground. Like Proust I recommend that you read Gass slowly to revel in the world in his every well-placed word. There is unquestionable genius in this work as evident as the genius of William Gaddis or Joyce or Proust. Gass and Gaddis redeem the contemporary American novel and Dalkey Archive should be congratulated for its devotion to publishing American masters whom America has not yet properly recognized as such. I really can't say enough in praise of this substantive literary novel, which is profoundly wise and brilliantly crafted and even luminous as a literary legacy sure to render Gass prominent, permanent billing among the American masters of the late 20th century. Savor the writing of William Gass: real genius resides underground in The Tunnel.

As my first introduction to Gass, I found The Tunnel to be slightly daunting, but as the story kept unfolding, I found myself being more and more enraptured by the novel. The wordplay, the asides, I could not restrain myself from continuing to read the novel. The novel never moved slow since aspects of Kohler were being developed over the whole thing. A short summary: This is a book about a history professor who just finished writing a massive book on Hitler, save the introduction. The book revolves goes through his character and life as he sits in anguish attempting to write the introduction.The setup may seem uninteresting, but it is far more interesting than you could ever imagine. The development of Kohler and all the people around him by Gass is phenomenal and looking at the faults of Kohler and his character are astonishing. A+ book, everyone should read it, if for no other than to learn more about themselves.

Having several times emerged, soul intact, out the other end of author Gass's novel--I have read the book thrice over--nothing could be clearer than that his tunnel DOES have a beginning, as it likewise is posessed of an end. Its source is the foetidly teeming cesspool of its author's aesthetically blissful, honorably loathsome mind. Its terminus--having looped its way in non-linear transit, two steps forward, one back--the catchbasin of its reader's. Kafka's abyss, Melville's whale, Joyce's Dublin, Faulkner's Yoknapatawha, Lowry's volcano, Pynchon's movie theater, now Gass's tunnel. This is a vastly uplifting, profoundly entertaining work of art, a tour de force performance, as are all Gassian works, that succeeds in being innovative and instructive at once. Does it require "close" reading? Is it subject to multiple interpretations? Is it an exercise in form over content? Perhaps. What it requires moreso is the reader's willingness to experience its text as an act of music, as it is one of architecture. Gass typically is taken to task for "playing God" with his readers, for demanding THEIR surrender to HIS art. In fact, that is precisely what he does, and it is that alchemical quality that renders his work so divine. It is not everyday, after all, that a writer can so miraculously convert dross to gold. That "The Tunnel," more's the pity, is not for everyone, is scarcely its author's fault. We have a habit, as readers, of looking our best gifthorses in the mouth, and this novel, the writer's masterwork, is nothing if not a gift. He is a national treasure, William Howard Gass, and each of his sentences is a gesture of generosity. At last, however hateful, "The Tunnel" is that rarest of creations, a thing of sublime and subterranean beauty, one that cuts with unflinching grace and honesty against the grain of its own self-created ground. Those who fail to recognize this are no more deserving of blame than are the tone-deaf for having tin ears, but they are, perhaps, owed our condolences. Is life a tunnel? A tunnel life? Might both be true? Dig into this novel, delve, dredge, quarry, excavate. The answer awaits.

This novel is utterly compelling, and once you accept the unstoppable nature of Gass's prose, you will be hooked on his unhinged and distressed language. As well as a complex character study, this book is about space, vacuums, the presence that absence leaves behind, and hence the very substance of the tunnel and not simply the dirt that surrounds it. This is as much a work of linguistic theory as it is a work of fiction, and will inhabit your life as an obsession.

William Frederick Kohler, the protagonist of William Gass' "The Tunnel," is a loathsome, despicable, misanthropic college professor ranting at his wife, his colleagues, his children and his mistresses. The sheer genius of Gass' book is not merely that he breathes life into such a character, but that he makes him so pruriently fascinating. Gass took nearly 30 years to complete this book; the elegance and rhythm of the prose demonstrate his skilled craftsmanship throughout its nearly 700 pages. I can't wait to read it again.