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To round out our Tunnel Big Read summations, participants GRSJR and Neil offer some final thoughts on their experiences with the book. First up, GRSJR:
I took my slide rule, compass, protractor, and other tools of critical reading and wasn’t able to apply them very well to William Gass’s The Tunnel. Maybe new tools are needed in such a modern narrative.
Originally, and even still, I’d presumed Gass would reveal some novelistic intent; An intent explained as theme, style, narrative, or other. But that intent I didn’t find. Instead, I found a description of an individual’s, Professor . . . continue reading, and add your comments
This post is part of the group read of William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. The read is concluded, but you can still experience this singular, bizarre book for yourself. Read along with us by having a look at the schedule here. Purchase the book here and benefit this site. All posts related to this group read are here.
These thoughts are from Gass aficionado Kirby Gann, whose novel Ghosting was recently named a Best Book of 2012 by Publishers Weekly.
. . . continue reading, and add your comments
This post is part of the group read of William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. The read is concluded, but you can still experience this singular, bizarre book for yourself. Read along with us by having a look at the schedule here. Purchase the book here and benefit this site. All posts related to this group read are here.
These thoughts are from Tunnel Big Read participant Hilary Plum.
I could not read The Tunnel before sleeping; then Kohler would hound me through my dreams. So for . . . continue reading, and add your comments
This post is part of the group read of William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. The read is concluded, but you can still experience this singular, bizarre book for yourself. Read along with us by having a look at the schedule here. Purchase the book here and benefit this site. All posts related to this group read are here.
Well, I’ve finished The Tunnel, and only a couple of days behind schedule; not too bad, considering that Gass much have seriously gone past . . . continue reading, and add your comments
We are group reading William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. We are currently in Week 5, our final week, covering pages 523 through the novel’s end. Get the schedule here. Purchase the book here and benefit this site. All posts related to this group read are here.
Well, here we are in our final week of The Tunnel. I don’t know about you all, but for me it is a relief to know that I will soon not have to live with Kohler . . . continue reading, and add your comments
This begins our fifth and final week of group reading The Tunnel. Congrats to those who have made it this far, and best wishes to those who have fallen behind but are determined to see the book through to the end.
If you do persist in The Tunnel, I’d like to ask: why? Are you enjoying the book? Does the Kohler train wreck fascinate you? Is it sheer inertia? Determination?
By contrast, if you’ve quit, what made you give Gass the heave ho?
We are group reading William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. We are currently in Week 4, covering pages 379 through 522. Get the schedule here. Purchase the book here and benefit this site. All posts related to this group read are here.
In my read of The Tunnel, this week’s section offers perhaps the most damning look at Kohler yet: the section titled “Around the House,” which is simply an account of a typical Kohler morning in his home. The “banality of evil” . . . continue reading, and add your comments
We are group reading William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. We are currently in Week 4, covering pages 379 through 522. Get the schedule here. Purchase the book here and benefit this site. All posts related to this group read are here.
To start, a quote from Gass:
My present novel, The Tunnel, is dominated by the trope of its title. The text is at once the hollow absence of life, words, and earth, which the narrator is hauling secretly away; then . . . continue reading, and add your comments
We are group reading William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. We are currently in Week 4, covering pages 379 through 522. Get the schedule here. Purchase the book here and benefit this site. All posts related to this group read are here.
We are in Week 4 of the Tunnel Big Read, but I’m going to begin this week with some thoughts on Week 3′s reading, since I did not have a chance to get to them last week. Week 3′s reading starts . . . continue reading, and add your comments
We are group reading William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. We are currently in Week 3, covering pages 247 through 379. Get the schedule here. Purchase the book here and benefit this site. All posts related to this group read are here.
Picking up on a theme that’s becoming more and more prevalent in the comments as our Tunnel Big Read moves through Week 3, a lot of us are slowing down. Interestingly, “being behind” doesn’t seem to correlate at all with “dropping . . . continue reading, and add your comments
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Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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Enrique Vila-Matas Interview
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
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