The Tunnel

by William H. Gass

Overview

William Frederick Kohler, a distinguished professor of history at a midwestern university, has just completed his magnum opus, "Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany." All that remains to be done is an introduction, yet when Kohler sits down to write he begins instead to write an entirely other book, another history- that of the historian himself. What he writes is the complete opposite of his clearly argued causally determined history of the Third Reich. It is chaotic, obscure, full of lies and disguises, gaps and repetitions. Indeed, his introduction is so personal that he hides it from his wife, and then begins digging a tunnel out from the basement of his house. The tunnel mirrors Kohler's digging into his life—his feelings, his past, his loves and hatreds, as the writing, the digging, and the reader's reading blend into one profound meditation on history, on evil, on the living and the dead. The Tunnel is a monumental and monumentally original work of fiction.

"The most beautiful, most complex, most disturbing novel to be published in my lifetime." (Michael Silverblatt, Los Angeles Times 3-19-95)

"A virtuoso performance. . . . What a remarkable show." (Kirkus 12-1-94)

"The masterpiece . . . of this 70-year-old American master." (Robert Kelly, New York Times 2-26-95)

"Each paragraph, each sentence, every clause, every phrase, has been burnished breathless, willfully wrought, stippled stark, with an obsessiveness bordering on Brodkey baroque." (John Leonard, Nation 3-20-95)

"Surely at least once per page, I leaned back in my chair and felt that opiated dilation of the senses, that vicious surplus, that glowworm flash of being that I can get only from language affixed to the page, and then only when a master has affixed it there." (Sven Birkerts, Atlantic 6-95)

"The Tunnel strikes me as an extraordinary achievement, a literary treat with more than a few shocking tricks inside of it. For 650 pages one of the consummate magicians of English prose pulls rabbits out of sentences and creates shimmering metaphors before your very eyes." (Michael Dirda, Washington Post Bool World 3-12-95)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628976366
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	04/07/2026
Series:	Dalkey Essentials
Pages:	675
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

William Gaddis (1922-98) stands among the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. The winner of two National Book Awards (for "J R" [1976] and "A Frolic of His Own" [1995]), he wrote five novels during his lifetime, including "Carpenter's Gothic "(1985), "Agap? Agape" (published posthumously in 2002), and his early masterpiece "The Recognitions" (1955). He is loved and admired for his stylistic innovations, his unforgettable characters, his pervasive humor, and the breadth of his intellect and vision.

Editorial Reviews

"The Tunnel strikes me as an extraordinary achievement, a literary treat with more than a few shocking tricks inside of it. For 650 pages one of the consummate magicians of English prose pulls rabbits out of sentences and creates shimmering metaphors before your very eyes."

"Gass has produced a book that burrows inside us then wails like a beast, a book that mainlines a century's terror direct to the brain."-"Voice Literary Supplement"

From the Publisher