If you pick up a copy of The Tunnel by William Gass, you aren't just buying a book. You’re basically adopting a 600-page problem.
It took Gass twenty-six years to finish this thing. Imagine that for a second. He started in the mid-sixties and didn’t emerge with a completed manuscript until 1995. By the time it actually hit the shelves, the literary world had built up this massive, almost mythical expectation. Some critics called it a masterpiece before they’d even read the final sentence. Others, honestly, were just terrified of it.
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The Most Hated "Hero" in Literature
The story—if you can even call it that—revolves around William Frederick Kohler. He’s a middle-aged history professor at a nondescript Midwestern university. He has just finished his magnum opus, a massive scholarly tome titled Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany.
But there’s a snag.
He can’t write the introduction. Every time he sits down to explain his historical findings, he ends up writing about his own miserable life instead. He writes about his alcoholic mother, his bigoted father, his loveless marriage to a woman named Martha, and his general loathing for his colleagues.
He is, quite frankly, a monster.
Kohler is a misogynist, a bigot, and a self-pitying crank. He’s obsessed with his own physical inadequacies and spends a bizarre amount of time composing dirty limericks about nuns. To hide this "shameful" personal writing from his wife, he begins tucking the pages inside the manuscript of his Nazi history book.
Then he starts digging. Literally. He starts digging a tunnel in his basement.
Why It Took 26 Years to Write
You’ve got to wonder what a man is doing for nearly three decades on a single novel. Gass wasn’t just procrastinating. He was obsessing over every single syllable. For him, the "story" was always secondary to the sentence.
He treated prose like sculpture.
He wanted the book to be a physical object as much as a narrative. The original Knopf edition is famously weird. It’s full of different fonts, strange diagrams, and even little icons of "pennants" for the imaginary political party Kohler founds: The Party of the Disappointed People.
Gass once said he wanted the book to be a "heavy, really richly textured lump of darkness." He achieved that. The text isn't just words on a page; it’s an architectural feat. He even used a twelve-tone musical scale as a structural guide for the twelve sections of the book.
Most writers try to make their books easy to read. Gass did the opposite. He wanted you to struggle. He wanted the reading experience to feel like digging a tunnel through hard, packed earth.
The "Fascism of the Heart"
The biggest misconception about The Tunnel is that it’s a book about the Holocaust. It isn’t. Not really.
Gass uses Nazi Germany as a backdrop to explore what he calls the "fascism of the heart." His argument—and Kohler’s lived experience—is that the same impulses that led to the Third Reich exist in the petty, everyday resentments of a suburban basement.
It’s about the way we colonize and destroy the people we claim to love.
Kohler looks at his own disappointments and sees the seeds of a dictator. He realizes that history isn't just made by "great men" in boots; it’s made by lonely, angry men in chairs. This hit a raw nerve when the book was released. Some reviewers, like Robert Alter, were deeply uncomfortable with how much Kohler sounded like Gass himself.
Gass just laughed that off. He said the similarities were a "test" for the reader's sophistication. He wanted to see if people could tell the difference between an author and a character. Turns out, a lot of people failed.
Is It Actually Readable?
Kinda.
Look, if you want a plot that goes from Point A to Point B, stay away. This book is a swamp. It’s a heap of memories, rants, and philosophical detours.
But if you like language? If you like sentences that make you stop and catch your breath? Then it’s a goldmine.
"My father is dressed in a thick green woodman's plaid wool shirt, so heavy with adjectives he can hardly lift his arms."
That’s a classic Gass line. He makes the abstract feel heavy and physical. You don't read this book for the "ending"—which, by the way, is famously abrupt and unresolved. You read it to see how far a human mind can go into its own darkness without blinking.
How to Approach the Tunnel Today
If you’re brave enough to try it, don’t try to "conquer" it in a weekend. You’ll lose.
- Read it out loud. Gass was a master of sound. The rhythm of the prose is often more important than the literal meaning.
- Don’t worry about the history. You don’t need a PhD in WWII to understand Kohler’s misery. The history is just the flavor of his particular brand of rot.
- Embrace the discomfort. Kohler is supposed to be repulsive. If you find yourself hating him, you’re doing it right.
- Watch for the visuals. Pay attention to the way the text moves on the page. The Star of David made of words, the different icons—they aren't just gimmicks. They are part of the "digging."
Ultimately, The Tunnel stands as a monument to the idea that fiction doesn't have to be "nice." It doesn't even have to be "good" in the traditional sense of being enjoyable. It just has to be real. And there is nothing more real, or more terrifying, than the inside of William Kohler’s head.
Start by finding a copy of the Dalkey Archive Press edition. It keeps the original formatting intact, which is essential. Set aside thirty minutes a day—no more—and let the sentences wash over you. Don't look for a map; just start digging.