Dalkey Essentials

The Tunnel, William H. Gass' colossal second novel, appeared on the literary scene in 1995, after three decades at the typewriter. The Tunnel was hailed by many as an indisputable masterpiece, reviled by others as a suffocating and overwhelming experiment, and has been voraciously studied by readers ever since. The story of a middle-aged history professor who, upon nearing completion of his magnum opus, "Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany," finds himself implicated in his own research, and begins to write a parallel work of history: his own life's story. Fearing that someone might find these confessional pages, he begins to dig a tunnel out from beneath his home in an attempt to hide, or escape, from the past that he has so diligently cataloged. The Tunnel is many things: an awe-inspiring and apocalyptic novel that reckons with the accumulating brutality of the twentieth century; a mirror, asking readers to confront their own potential for darkness; and the crowning achievement by one of America's great prose stylists.