The Tunnel

Rating:
Summary: A Story For The Ages
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: K tunnel -- has nothing to do with anything!
Review: I saw the K tunnel once. I was at a rave in an old, decrepit laser tag arena. Everyone was strung out and the music was pretty bad, but all in all I didn't have a bad time. No, I haven't read this book. I just needed to see what happens when you write a review. I love William Gass though. Maybe I'll read it and then get back to you. Thanks for reading this. Hope you're enjoying pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: Not for everyone. Certainly not for me.
Review: If I were to tell the protagonist from The Tunnel that I had issues with his book, he'd probably just wave me sideways towards the Party for Disappointed People. Get in line, he'd sigh. Life is disappointing.

I liked the conceit of the Party for Disappointed People. I liked many of the one liners. I admired Gass' writing ability. Mostly I admired the project even if I confess that I couldn't like the book.

652 pages of dense (often unreadable) prose with a grotty poorly-endowed main character who has affairs with his students, kills his wife's cat and generally feels sorry for himself. Whoosh. It took me weeks to read, and *nothing* takes me weeks to read. I genuinely tried to follow everything in the book, but I have to confess that my grasp of his German experiences is spotty and I never really got Susu. The clearest and most readable bit was the bitchy backbiting about his colleagues in the department where he teaches. That was at least funny.

Generally, I felt like it tried way too hard to be a huge sprawling classic. I agreed with much of what it said about history and how you approach it-- again, the project is what I admired. Maybe I just couldn't feel too much for a book that seems to reject any ability to feel joy or to be anything except disappointed. I mean I *love* Beckett, but Gass isn't Beckett and I never got the feeling that he earned all that bitterness. Kohler isn't sympathetic either as a hero or as an anti-hero and while I guess that's part of the point, I didn't find that I admired the point.

Maybe I'm just not literary enough. Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky. Anything is possible. Read it yourself and see.

Rating:
Summary: Obnoxious
Review: If you can manage to make it through this 650 page ode to ego,triviality,not-so-deep insights and out-of-this-world pomposity,then you must have a strong stomach and one dirty mind.All the same,this book is an achievement;how many authors can flatulate continually for 650 pages?If you are under 21,this book might hold some appeal.By the way,his essays and short stories are every bit as ridiculous as this supposed novel.Cartoons have more substance than Gass.Avoid at all costs.

Rating:
Summary: Gass's ziggurat
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Obnoxious
Review: William Gass is so obviously an obnoxious creep that I suggest avoiding him at all cost. This ridiculous, boring, tedious thing he calls a novel should never have been published. It's no wonder the publishing industry is having problems when the produce terrible books like this. Someone please take this man's typewriter away from him.

Rating:
Summary: Modernist swill
Review: William H Gass' The Tunnel is a huge disappointment - it's turgid, tedious and chaotic, with a surfeit of detail that's the literary equivalent of a build-up of sludge in a pipe. If you would prefer to read a more amenable and richly rewarding text by this author, try his early novel Omensetter's Luck, or the book of short fiction, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, both of which are wonderful.