The Tunnel
A sprawling novel in which a history professor turns inward, excavating memory, disgust, and guilt.
Work Information
The act of digging a tunnel becomes an act of digging into the self.
William H. Gass's The Tunnel is a vast experimental novel that pursues wartime memory and personal collapse through an obsessive voice.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Published
- 1995-02-21
- Pages
- 651 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.51 x 4.45 x 24.13 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780679437673
- ISBN-10
- 0679437673
- Price
- 81399 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Literary
The narrator of The Tunnel is a distinguished man in his fifties, William Frederick Kohler, a professor at a Midwestern university. His principal subject, the Third Reich. He has just completed his massive magnum opus, Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany. All that remains to write is an introduction. Kohler sits down to write a self-congratulatory text and finds himself unaccountably blocked. 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 Reich. It is as subjective and private as history is objective and public, as apparently shapeless and stagnant as history is ordered and directive. It is chaotic, obscure, full of lies and disguises, gaps and repetitions. Indeed, his Introduction is so personal that he fears his wife will find it, and he slides the manuscript between pages of his book, where he knows it will not be found. At the same time, Kohler begins digging a tunnel out from the basement of his house. The tunnel comes to mirror Kohler's digging into his life - his feelings, his past, his own few loves and many hatreds. The writing, the digging, the reader's reading, continue together, creating a hole driven into both language and the past, getting closer to and fleeing from the secrets of the novel's fundamental theme - the fascism of the heart.
William Gass has been a Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University and Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Director of the International Writers Center.
Reviews
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American Metafiction Masterpiece
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.
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At last back in print.
Well worth the wait , incredible writing , a genius
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Excelente estado.
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Must read
Masterpiece, props to Dalkey and Deep Vellum for bringing this back
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Five Stars
Ron Potter here. You have to be brave or warped to read this book. A fascinating read