The Tunnel is a 1995 novel by the American author William H. Gass. The novel took 26 years to write and earned him the American Book Award of 1996, and was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award.
The Tunnel is the work of William Frederick Kohler, a professor of history at an unnamed university in the American Midwest. Kohler's introduction to his major work on World War II, Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany, the culmination of his years studying the aspects of the Nazi regime in the scope of its causes and effects, turns into The Tunnel, a brutally honest and subjective depiction of his own life and history and the opposite of the well-argued, researched and objective book he has just completed. When the harsh reality of his work begins to dawn on him, he fears that his wife, Martha, will stumble onto his papers and read his most personal (and cruel) descriptions of his and their life. Because of this fear, he hides the pages of The Tunnel inside of Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany. During this time, he starts to dig a tunnel underneath the basement of his home, eventually hiding the dirt inside the drawers of his wife's collection of antique furniture.
In 2006 Dalkey Archive Press released an audiobook of the complete novel read by the author (in 2005 in St. Louis). The accompanying booklet prints Gass's overview of the novel's contents, structure, plot, "condition of the text", aim, cast, levels of organization, issues, and other matters.
Plot summary
The Tunnel's 652 pages are divided into twelve main sections. In a 1995 radio interview at KCRW with Michael Silverblatt, Gass stated that the difficulty of the novel's early sections, which are introduced by a quote from Anaxagoras ("The descent to hell is the same from every place"), serve as both a false beginning to The Tunnel (the introduction Kohler is writing and his digging project) and as a test for the reader: "I think this is a standard modernist thing, but what it is is to make sure that the person who gets into the book is ready and deserves to be there. It's a kind of a test of competency [...] It's also, I think, essential, to, fairly early, establish the kind of range of reference, of demand, that the book is going to make of the reader. I think that's just fair."
1. Life in a Chair
Kohler introduces the reader to his scholarly work on the Germans, and contemplates the implications of spending the majority of his working life in a chair. The chair he occupies in the novel belonged to his mentor, the German history professor and Nazi collaborator Magus Tabor. Gass uses quite a bit of typographical variety in this section (a window and a Star of David, both constructed out of text, are notable examples) and includes pictures, drawings and watermarks.
2. Koh Whistles Up a Wind
Section two begins with a compilation of excuses from Kohler's university students, then segues into a contemplation of the Muse. This leads Kohler to list his literary preferences, a litany that includes Proust, Mann, Lawrence and Rilke. These reflections trigger Kohler to recall a childhood walk to Market Street, which then leads him to an examination of the literary tastes of his youth. The section ends with a long introduction of Kohler's mentor, Magus "Mad Meg" Tabor, which alternates from the professor's lectures to the narrator's memories of the man.
3. We Have Not Lived the Right Life
Kohler reflects on his life, interspersing childhood memories with descriptions of his house. The character of Uncle Balt, a tall, sonorous farmer whose folksy pronouncements ("THEY'LL MAKE YOU INTO MAN JAM AND SERVE YOU ON TOAST") Kohler records and contemplates. This sections also contains a visit to Kohler's university office, and the first extended passage concerning the narrator's parents.
4. Today I Began to Dig
Kohler begins work on his tunnel, breaking through his basement's cement floor to a layer of cobbles. He describes his workspace, and meditates on his marriage, his book, and his colleagues, specifically Culp, an inveterate dirty limerick writer and the leader of Kohler's sons' boy scout troop. Gass includes many of Culp's limericks (he's trying to write a history of the world using the form) and also brings back a few of the typographical inventions (a page designed to look like a paper sack; business cards) that dominated the novel's earlier sections.