While writing the introduction to his magnum opus, a moral history of Hitler's Germany, a middle-aged historian finds himself writing instead a his...
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Apr 05, 2011
Chris
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For six hundred and fifty-one pages Gass invites the reader to wade through a lifetime of memories dredged—and at times perhaps cooked—up by a caustically disillusioned and despairing professor of history at a midwest American university, a reminiscence that functions as a delaying tactic against the completion of his life's work: a massive, exhaustively researched revisionist history of the Third Reich entitled Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany. Beginning his recollection with Anaxagoras'
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Nov 22, 2011
Linda
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This was one of my all-time favorite books. In fact I think it puts Homer's Iliad in second place! This in not a book you read by the fire in the evening with soft music in the background. This is a book to study! to be appreciated for it's depth and raw-ness and honesty. Prepare for a symbolic read. Prepare to be confused on page ??? only to be enlighted on page ????, over and over again. This is a book that has more to say in the white spaces than in the inked words, oh so many words, lists, m
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Jun 20, 2011
David
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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 creat
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Oct 24, 2009
Joselito
rated it: 
This book will give you gas.
This was supposed to have been written in 30 long years, so the author started writing this at around 40 years old and finished it at around 70.
If you're going to write a book that long period of a time, that could only mean that you didn't have that inspiration to write one. That shows here. This book just rambled on and on, without direction. Sometimes the author would talk about his wife, sometimes about his small penis, then Hitler, then he More...
This was supposed to have been written in 30 long years, so the author started writing this at around 40 years old and finished it at around 70.
If you're going to write a book that long period of a time, that could only mean that you didn't have that inspiration to write one. That shows here. This book just rambled on and on, without direction. Sometimes the author would talk about his wife, sometimes about his small penis, then Hitler, then he More...
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Aug 07, 2009
Rodney
rated it: 
Someone gave me this book to review when it first came out, and I took the job quite seriously and with great enthusiasm, as I was already a fan of Gass's "Omensetter's Luck." I spent a long time with it, taking copious notes, giving it my careful attention, and slowly but surely wondering if I was wasting my time. It's about a man who has written a book on Nazi Germany, and is in the process of writing an introduction that turns into his own life story. He is tunneling through his lif
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Jun 19, 2009
Read the STOP SMILING interview with author William H. Gass
Hey, Rube: WILLIAM H. GASS
By Leopold Froehlich
(This interview originally appeared in the STOP SMILING Ode to the Midwest Issue)
William H. Gass’s 1966 masterpiece, Omensetter’s Luck, could be described as the perfect novel of the Midwest. Set in a small Ohio town in the 1890s, Omensetter defined the essential Midwestern struggle between goodness and cunning. Gass, in fact, may be the great Midwestern wri More...
Hey, Rube: WILLIAM H. GASS
By Leopold Froehlich
(This interview originally appeared in the STOP SMILING Ode to the Midwest Issue)
William H. Gass’s 1966 masterpiece, Omensetter’s Luck, could be described as the perfect novel of the Midwest. Set in a small Ohio town in the 1890s, Omensetter defined the essential Midwestern struggle between goodness and cunning. Gass, in fact, may be the great Midwestern wri More...
May 04, 2009
Daniel
rated it: 
Where to position Gass? Yes, a French academic, a portraiturist, a David or better, an Ingres - who expended four years finishing his masterful portrait, during which he pulled out his hair. Whereas with Gass it's thirty some years during which he pulled out his pubic hair. Is this American? Has he any Pyncon? If he, like Gass says, is like a surgeon, than unlike him Gass makes a mess - the novel ends with what appears to be an inked asshole - surely this is, a sphincter, since Gass says:
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Jun 28, 2011
Eel
rated it:
it's hard to know what to make of this book after one reading, but it is one of the most carefully crafted books i've ever read. i can see why gass refers to it as an anti-novel: it doesn't read like a novel. it reads like something somewhere between the thoughts of a crazed person and a poem that took 26 years to write.
this book beats you down. kohler is not a likable person. there are not a lot of funny things in this book. it is very long (longer than many 900 or 1000 page books!) More...
this book beats you down. kohler is not a likable person. there are not a lot of funny things in this book. it is very long (longer than many 900 or 1000 page books!) More...
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Jan 30, 2009
Bruce
rated it:
William H. Gass’s novel, The Tunnel, stretches the very definition of a novel, it being a vast and introspective interior monologue narrated by one William Frederick Kohler, a history professor at a midwestern university (the plot, if plot there be, consists of Kohler’s digging a secret tunnel out of his basement). Kohler begins his writing intending it to be a brief introduction to his just-completed immense history of the Holocaust, Guilt and Innocence in Hitler’s Germany, but it quickly beco
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Dec 16, 2009
Andrew
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I've read this twice now, and there's just no comparing: this book contains the most musical use of the english language ever written.
there is really no comparison.
any three star review is by someone lacking an ear (truly)
there is really no comparison.
any three star review is by someone lacking an ear (truly)
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Jun 13, 2011
Zach
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there are a lot of themes at work in the tunnel that require a sustained drag thru the muck to understand why they're important. the reader will fight with the book because it's utterly unpalatable; the reader will pick it back up because the words are put together pretty, or possibly because a sense of schadenfreude compels him. the reader will slowly realize that his own base tendencies and disappointments, as minute as they seem to be, might just resemble those of the "repugnant" na
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Nov 20, 2011
... dense, oppressive, suffocating ... a monstrous web of glistening similes about death ... the sensations, thoughts and even dreams that it provokes permit absorption in Real Time or none ...
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... sticking with it after all, now past the 100 p. mark ... i think the key is very small dosage and read at same time as other things far less dense ...
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i am trying again (sept. 2011) but i can already tell that i'll bail for what must be the third or fourth t More...
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... sticking with it after all, now past the 100 p. mark ... i think the key is very small dosage and read at same time as other things far less dense ...
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i am trying again (sept. 2011) but i can already tell that i'll bail for what must be the third or fourth t More...
Jan 12, 2009
Adam
rated it: 
This is somewhat awful.
I'm considering abandoning it after 50 pages. Maybe my inertia, like the inertia it describes, will carry me farther in, and maybe it'll get good.
If you want to read about disappointment, bowel movements, and being a failure in what is probably the finest alliterative prose of the modern era, dive in.
Supposedly he wasn't raised so good.
Some moments are incredibly brilliant. But I need more story.
I'm considering abandoning it after 50 pages. Maybe my inertia, like the inertia it describes, will carry me farther in, and maybe it'll get good.
If you want to read about disappointment, bowel movements, and being a failure in what is probably the finest alliterative prose of the modern era, dive in.
Supposedly he wasn't raised so good.
Some moments are incredibly brilliant. But I need more story.
Jan 02, 2011
David
rated it:
The scope of this book is astounding. The amount of detail is overwhelming. And, in the end, the narrator's contemplation of his existence is perfectly developed. This is a book worthy of serious study, but not one to be advised to fair-weather readers. There is some amazing writing within its covers, but readers have to do some serious hiking to get to it. Not that this is a bad thing, it's just something readers should be aware of before they even think of making the attempt.
Jul 28, 2011
(500 pg.) Vociferous, steamrolling stream of consciousness poetry-prose. More metaphors than I've ever seen in a novel--of any length. A 50 yr. old historian has just finished his magnum opus, "Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany". He starts to write the intro, but actually writes of his own life.
Jun 09, 2009
Justin
rated it:
One of the most difficult books I have read. If you don't mind slogging through 50 pages of only semi-interesting stream-of-conciousness writing to get to an achingly gorgeous and brilliant phrase that you will read over and over for 10 minutes, then enjoy.
Mar 02, 2009
Nuphile
rated it:
While masterfully written this is not a likable book. The negativity seethes and oozes like a gangrenous cut. Not for everyone or for any state of mind, it takes patience and courage to absorb, but is mostly worth it in the end.
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Jan 07, 2011
Alex
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This is the most troubling book I have ever read. A genuinely and honestly disturbing look at the "Fascism of the Heart".
Sep 01, 2008
Gass is clearly a phenomenally talented prose stylist, and this prose style dovetails beautifully with his odd typographies and flourishes of concrete experimentation. That said, I wouldn't recommend this to everybody. In fact, it's physically painful to read at times. Our protagonist is one of the most unlikable characters I've ever encountered, and he seeps into your being, nauseating you. 650 pages of him talking at you, one massive, anti-human, vaguely fascist screed. Intensely well-wri
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Jan 28, 2008
Tony
rated it:
"I realize I must again attempt yo put this prison of my life in language." With quotes like that how can you go wrong? I classify Gass as a "linguistic master" alongside guys like Pynchon and Elkin, guys who employ language like daggers of immeasurable beauty. And I think Gass is the best of them, especially his short stories. But, he can lose focus and I always come back to the problem of narrative. I want some of it in the novel as well as the short story.
Sep 19, 2007
Jack
rated it:
This book has joined a very select list- I stopped reading it. I know- how can I possibly say I didn't like the book if I didn't finish it... I made an informed decision that the time spent reading this pretentious (please note that Pynchon & Foucault are on my read list...but this is pretentious) crap would be better spent reading something else, or making chili, or driving a pointed object into my aural canal...
Jan 26, 2010
Nicole
rated it:
A stream-of-consciousness book written from the point of view of a history professor, who, after completing a book on Hitler's Germany, ends up writing a book about his own life, rather than the introduction for the completed book. It's disturbing, and sad, and perverted, and funny, all at the same time. Takes a long time to get through, but it was worth it. Would be fun to read out loud.
Dec 16, 2009
Jared
rated it:
I can't believe I made it all the way through this. At page 150 I was convinced that it was maybe the best book I'd ever read, by page 300 I was disillusioned and by the end of it I was bored and pissed off. I'm a little ashamed I didn't know what Kristallnacht was until I read this...
Jul 04, 2011
Charles Martin
rated it:
A work of considerable erudition, which too often stumbles over Gass' winding, gargantuan prose. I respect his intentions, but find the experiment ultimately unmoving. The Tunnel is a recommended read, however, for the inimitable beauty of the narrative's rare lucid moments.
Jan 04, 2008
stew
rated it:
A filthy beast of a book.
Loved and hated every single sentence. It's basically about nothing but an intolerable human being disgusted with his self and everything around him; the bonus is that the reader is subjected to every single impulse and thought he has.
Loved and hated every single sentence. It's basically about nothing but an intolerable human being disgusted with his self and everything around him; the bonus is that the reader is subjected to every single impulse and thought he has.
Sep 22, 2011
This is another one of those beasts that I'll have to put off until I'm ready. So much intertext and diagrams and metafiction. I can really enjoy this one, I can tell from the marvelous prose. But I'll have to wait and learn some more.
Jan 26, 2008
Anthony
rated it:
well... i loved omensetter's luck and i think william gass is an important writer, but this book depressed me more than any other book i've ever read. i feel sick when i look at it. be careful with this one, friends.
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