At his best, Gass reminds me of Montaigne. While the latter spent much of his time ruminating about Self, Gass essays his verbal prowess to inhabit Word--the logos made flesh. The later Wittgenstein also comes to mind. His seminal short story, "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country," was a tour de force, a literary work which bowled me over with its virtuosity with language. His essays, likewise, show a brilliant mind at work, pursuing obsessively words that make metaphysical of the quotidian.

This just might be the funniest book of the 20th century. I have seen this book and read it and . . . do you know what I'm going to tell you, I have loved this book. Do you understand what I am saying? Now you go read your chapter 12 of Ulysses and many other passages that might incriminate my good author here by the proof of that book's very burdensome influence which became like a terrible complex for the man who became after the writing of this book the Dublin columnist known as Myles na Gopaleen but was at this time still the man of imagination, Flann O'Brien . . . and you come back here, with all your expectations about first novels and incomprehensible, overindulgent spaghetti-messes of plots . . . and try to tell me that every aspect, those and all the others, one might apply to this type of book that could have been fatal faults are here made in its favor by the undeniable force of its whole, a power that cannot be denied in the same way that a frigging cloud cannot be denied to resemble a plate of hot mashed potatoes or what-you-will . . . you come back here and try to tell yourself that you didn't like it . . . and then I will ask you to kindly try to read it again, this time with your skull-boned eyes open. P.S. This is a much better book than The Third Policeman.

I'M HERE TO TELL YOU: THIS IS THE FUNNIEST BOOK IN THE WHOLE WORLD YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF. But don't believe me -- Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas, John Updike, and yes, Jimmy Joyce himself all felt the same about this impossibly convoluted Irish stew of mythology, poetry, drunken banter, and scatological humor. The book is constructed (to use the term loosely) as a UC Dublin student's journal during his final year, including his "spare time literary activities" interspersed with his "biological reminiscences". The former consist of a series of fitful forays into ancient Irish mythology, coupled with a book-within-a-book (within-a-book) attempt to write a highbrow novel. The latter involve the narrator's recountings of his (mostly inebriated) carousals and daft philosophizings with his odd cronies, admixed with his tense and tenuous relationship with his straightlaced uncle, with whom he boards. But to concentrate on the book's plot or content, such as they are, would be pointless. The book's real magic lies in Flann's virtuosic use of unabashed verbosity, unblinking descriptiveness, and just plain words, words, words, to provoke laugh after laugh after laugh after laugh. Nobody -- not Sterne, not Joyce, not even Groucho -- could string together words as funnily as Flann. It's as though an Irish Robin Williams had been locked up in his room with a pencil, pad, pint after pint, and his own mad (but very well-read) imagination. Read this book, you could use a good laugh (everyone can use a good laugh). Just don't drink anything while you're reading, guaranteed it'll end up coming out your nose.

This is, above all, a funny and playful book, playful with itself and the various conceits of fiction: the suspension of disbelief, the conventions of form, and the pretensions of rhetoric. Think of it as Pirandello meets the Marx Brothers.

"At Swim-Two-Birds" delights in rapid-fire wordplay and sophomoric experimentation (there are three alternative beginnings to the story). O'Brien succeeds in this bombastic flair partly because he doesn't take the literary enterprise--his own included--too seriously. He races along at a Groucho-like pace, only to slow down in wonderfully overwritten and overwrought scenes:

"Together the two strong men, joyous in the miracle of their health, put their bulging thews and the fine ripple of their sinews together at the arm-pits of the stricken king as they bent over him with their grunting red faces, their four heels sinking down in the turf of the jungle with the stress of their fine effort as they hoisted the madman to the tremulous support of his withered legs."

Indeed!

James Joyce praised O'Brien as "a real author, with the true comic spirit," and Graham Greene called this "a book in a thousand....in the line of Tristram Shandy and Ulysses." Like Joyce, O'Brien dazzles us with language and the sheer sound of words. The narrative is interrupted with rhetorical notes ("Name of figure of speech: Litotes [or Meiosis]"), populated by varying narrators "Tour de force by Brinsley, vocally interjected, being a comparable description in the Finn canon:," and buoyed by dialogue that variously recalls 30's screwball comedies,B-movie Westerns, and bad courtroom dramas.

O'Brien himself offers some literary "theory" that illustrates his comic sensibility and offers sly clues for his delighted (and maybe perplexed) reader: "...a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of his credulity," and, "Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before--usually said much better (Page 33)." Flann O'Brien's command of--and upending of--narrative forms, and the hilarity of his farce make this an essential addition to any comic library. Then again, I could be wrong.

(Buy it!)

I am very glad that I decided to read _Omensetter's Luck_ all the way through. Hidden in a plethora of incoherent sentences, incomprehensible metaphors and silly rhymes, is a very worthwhile story of two men: Brackett Omensetter, who migrates to Gilean, Ohio with his wife and small children, and the Reverend Jethro Furber, who is the town's minister. Furber suffers from deeply repressed guilt, fear, and resentment; his behavior occasionally borders on the psychotic. In his section of the book, Furber gives (or does he imagine giving?) a lengthy church sermon. Although the sermon is fascinatingly self-revealing, I continuously found myself getting lost in Furber's incoherent word salad. I decided, however, to stay with the book, despite the repeated temptation to put it down. As I continued to read, and to my very pleasant surprise, I discovered Omensetter to be a man of great decency and selflessness. He stands head and shoulders above a town full of petty people, many of whom were jealous and resentful of Omensetter's legendary "luck." Gilean's denizens even attributed luck to Omensetter's ability to save miraculously the life of a man dying of lockjaw, contracted from a serious accident. Practically none of the townspeople stand by Omensetter when, later, he is unjustly accused of being responsible for the hanging death of this same man.

Everything comes together nicely in the last one hundred pages of the book. I credit William Gass' well-paced, extremely realistic dialogue for helping to accomplish this feat, which I would have otherwise considered impossible had I mistakenly decided not to stick with this flawed, but must-read book.

Based on the very positive reviews this book received from my preceding reviewers and the highly negative connotations that some list compilers bestowed on it's author, I bought Gass's Tunnel and Omensetter's Luck, and started with the latter. The book presents a post modern take on the typical Faulkner novel/character study.
Gass chose a story build out of the triple narration of the same incident, from three different perspectives, molded in three different styles. As such, it brings stylistic elements from Joyce's "portrait" to mind. The first two takes are in straight forward prose, the third "Furber" version is in stream of conscience. It pains me to say, after all the accolades that Mr. Mondo -who claims to read an average of three of these works every single week- bestowed on this work, but the Nobel Prize tends to be given to those that provide significant elucidation. What we have here can at best be described as transcendent delucidation.
Of course, after the canonization of the Zarathustra of Ueber-Egos - I am talking here about JJ again-, stream of conscience stands as the pinnacle of artistic literary expression. Yet, I prefer Philip Roth's analysis of this phenomenon: "because that was the way that James Joyce pretended that human beings thought". By the way, Gass should not be counted among the greatest stream of conscience artists.

Enough about the style, how about the substance. Admittedly, there is an awful lot of it here. The issues of good and evil, the individual against society, religion and a whole catalog of other human aberrations. The best critique that I could come up with would be similar to Gass's beautiful introduction to Gaddis' Recognitions, a stylist that he sometimes approaches, but never quite equals.
In all a worthwhile read with often thought provoking and shattering insights, just (a little) short of greatness.

Even with its antiquated setting, "Omensetter's Luck" is so avant-garde and eccentric that it's a challenge to write a review that doesn't seem like a shameful oversimplification. Imagine a story about perceptions of good and evil, envy, and suspicion narrated in an impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness style that rivals Faulkner at his most experimental, combining uniquely poetic prose, Joycean wordplay, an ominous mood, and multiple focuses, voices, and perspectives, and you'll begin to get the idea.

The time is evidently the late nineteenth century, the place a small town called Gilean located on the Ohio River. A "wide and happy" man named Brackett Omensetter recently has moved into town with his pregnant wife, two daughters, dog, and a mountain of furniture and belongings on a horse-drawn cart. He rents a house from a man named Henry Pimber and gets a job as a tanner with Mat Watson, the town blacksmith.

Omensetter quickly becomes an object of curiosity in Gilean for his unbelievable, almost supernatural, luck. In the middle of the rainy season, the rain stops for his moving day; his house manages to avoid an otherwise damage-guaranteeing flood; he seems impervious to injury. He's an expert stone skipper and an effective naturalistic healer. Nobody will bet against him. He is not only aware of his own incredible luck; he depends on it so strongly that it replaces religion, and he feels no need to attend Gilean's only church, ministered by the Reverend Jethro Furber.

Furber is a fascinating character who avoids the flatness of most fictional preachers. His parents sheltered him insufferably as a child, depriving him of anything they considered a bad moral influence and prohibiting him from playing with other kids; now he walks around reciting dirty songs to himself and talks to the grave of Pike, a previous pastor. He resents Omensetter's neglect of the church yet is intrigued by his ostensible luck; unsurprisingly, he accuses Omensetter of being "of the dark ways" and "beyond the reach of God." He tries gently to persuade Watson to fire Omensetter, which would force him to leave town...P>Approaching "The Sound and the Fury" and "As I Lay Dying" in complexity of both narration and characterization, "Omensetter's Luck" is an odd book in both style and substance, the product of an independent literary thinker who demonstrates that a truly good story transcends even the strangest packaging.

After having prepared myself for The Recognitions, reading the praise and knowing I must sooner or later approach this lengthy, always prefaced "difficult" work, I have to say I found it a beguiling and very near classic -- yet I feel it necessary to maintain the "very near" in my assessment.

First, it cannot be denied there are passages in this novel that strike like lightning, particularly the descriptions of walking in New York City. I have never read a better description of that icy, speedy feeling than in this book.

The thickness, the syrupy references lend a biblical feel to the book, and I think that is effective too.

Still, having reached 900 pages, I began to realize the author disliked and possibly even hated not most, but all of his characters. There seemed nothing noble that did not become ridiculous in their desires. Realizing Gaddis is to some degree a satirist, I still believe he meant to reach further than satire alone. Surely a satire of supposed New York sophisticates, or the art world, would require less than almost a thousand pages. A Mad magazine treatment would do.

I also found the last chapter anti-climactic. I feel the novel places Wyatt at its center, then pulls away at the last minute in the style of a movie ending in titles describing what happened to all the characters.

Yes, it is a unique and brilliant book, but still it must be said there is something just missing.

I read Gaddis's masterpiece about 5 years ago. Like any formidable task, I had to persist to finish it. But The Recognitions has influenced me as much as the Holy Bible.

The book is difficult. It entwines a variety of themes, characters, and vignettes. But the pervasive theme is forgery. With great entertainment, Gaddis suggests that most lives are forgeries, as are most works of art and texts -- in one sense or another. Recognitions, whereby one tastes a sense of something real, occur rarely in a lifetime , if at all. (For me, reading this book was a recognition.)

Gaddis's favorite and most resonant metaphor is the church, in particular the Roman Catholic church. Many of his characters are named for the saints, who, along with bishops of all sects, wore and wear gowns, while hiding a thousand yards of material up their sleeves. No only do their gowns, or robes (feminine by custom) deceive us politically,socially, and economically -- not to mention religiously, they are sexually alluring, suggesting easy entre' both homosexually and heterosexually. The former is better disguised in the book -- as befits its theme, but it makes the greater imprint (especially since homosexuality is still proscribed by the Church as unnatural and spiritually and physically injurious)...

Gaddis is after more than our personal forgeries and those of our art, he is out to "expose" the most sacred of our cows: our beliefs and our faith.

In 1955, with the appearance of William Gaddis' 1000 page novel, The Recognitions, it was demonstrated once and for all that a general literary system which is based upon the strict interdependence of (1) non-writers reviewing books for money, against a deadline, and (2) the publishers' use of these reviews in advertising and distribution, is an abysmal failure. The book, and it is doubtless a great one, was completely ignored. Reviewers who treated it at all did so vicariously; they did not become engaged by the work itself--they simply did not have the time. They disposed of it by category, label, pigeonhole--the most facile and common being to compare it, with great disfavor, to Ulysses. The.author, it was said, was obviously trying to create a "work of art" or a "masterpiece"--this put them off. What they really said was that the author was trying to give the impression of having created a work of art or a masterpiece. This is because American "literary criticism" is not equipped to deal with work on any other level than that of the author's intentions. American critics--and this is true of no other contemporary culture--are themselves so far removed from the creative process, and from all imaginative thought, that their response to a work can never be on the basis of what the work is, but on what it seems to represent. It is psychologically untenable for such a person to admit the possibility of direct contact, or experience with a "work of art" or a "masterpiece"--other, of course, than those so certified and still smelling of the grave. The Recognitions does not need praise; it needs to be read.

I don't know why I torture myself with Gass' fiction, but if I'm gonna be a masochist, I might as well go all the way. Well, this book isn't as full of it as some of Monsieur le Gass' other fiction. There were a couple of stories in here I wanted to hate, but actually ended up liking (Bed & Breakfast, The Master of Secret Revenges). Maybe it's because Willy stopped being pretentious for a minute and wrote a couple of decidedly good stories. Wow, instead of trying to impress himself and the crusty old academics who worship him like Buddha with big words (like consubstantiation and myxomatosis), heavy symbolism (he talks about his 'parts' waaay too much!) and incomprehensible sentence structures (for example: most of gass. is- like this- written like this. yes. gass. write this like this.), he actually just wrote in plain English. I'm impressed; I didn't know he had it in him! Bravo!

A stunning realization of the Cartesian halves: the mind (on the one side); the flesh (on the other). All of the Gassian exploration of the marrow of language, metaphor and the life of lyricism is here. But so is his visceral presentation of the flesh, bones and fragile surfaces of the body of one Ella Bend. With the halves (thinking; therefore, being) folding and unfolding into and away from each other. The smell of earth, the abuses of existence, the pull of poetry: its all there. One of the best things I've ever read.

a stunning realization of the Cartesian halves: the mind (on the one side); the flesh (on the other). All of the Gassian exploration of the marrow of language, metaphor and the life of lyricism is here. But so is his visceral presentation of the flesh, bones and fragile surfaces of the body of one Ella Bend. With the halves (thinking; therefore, being) folding and unfolding into and away from each other. The smell of earth, the abuses of existence, the pull of poetry: its all there. One of the best things I've ever read.

This purports to be a medical textbook, and many of the obviously learned author's quotations are from half-forgotten late mediæval medical writers. A plausible translation of the title into modern terms would be "A Study of Abnormal Psychology." The application of Scholastic methods to this topic --- so similar, and yet so different, from contemporary academic discourse --- creates a curious impression. He invokes astrology and theology in forming his psychology.

But in fact, Burton uses this arcane subject to go off on a profound and lengthy meditation on the melancholies and misfortunes of life itself. The author, it seems, was easily distracted, and his distractions are our gain. The passages on the Melancholy of Scholars, and the Melancholy of Lovers, are themselves worthy of the price of admission.

His prose is unlike anything before him or since him. It has some kinship to the paradoxical and simile-laden style of the Euphuists, but his individual sentences are often pithy and brief.

This seventeenth-century classic ought to be read by anyone interested in the period, in early psychology, or in the history of English prose.

Of all the editions of THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY that have ever been published, this may be the best for the general reader. The NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS CLASSIC edition wisely reprints the great 1932 Everyman's Library edition, with its wonderful introduction by the noted bookman Holbrook Jackson. (Readers are advised to skim or skip the rather pretentious new introduction by William H. Gass.)

Unlike the "all-English" edition referenced..., the Everyman/NYRBClassic edition gives the Latin tags as Burton scattered them through his work and translates each and every one, either in brackets immediately afterward, or (sometimes) in an endnote to each of the three volumes (now bound as one). I've tried to read the "all-English" edition, and it's disappointing, because it turns out that Burton wanted readers to read the Latin tags whether they could understand them or not. He included their syllables in the rhythm of his prose, so as you read this edition, you can almost hear him quote, then translate, then continue onward.

No booklover should skip this one, and this is the edition to have.

Don't be misled by the title of this book, nor by what others may have told you about it. In the first place, it isn't so much a book about 'Melancholy' (or abnormal psychology, or depression, or whatever) as a book about Burton himself and, ultimately, about humankind. Secondly, it isn't so much a book for students of the history of English prose, as one for lovers of language who joy in the strong taste of English when it was at its most masculine and vigorous. Finally, it isn't so much a book for those interested in the renaissance, as for those interested in life.

Burton is not a writer for fops and milquetoasts. He was a crusty old devil who used to go down to the river to listen to the bargemen cursing so that he could keep in touch with the true tongue of his race. Sometimes I think he might have been better off as the swashbuckling Captain of a pirate ship. But somehow he ended up as a scholar, and instead of watching the ocean satisfyingly swallowing up his victims, he himself became an ocean of learning swallowing up whole libraries. His book, in consequence, although it may have begun as a mere 'medical treatise,' soon exploded beyond its bounds to become, in the words of one of his editors, "a grand literary entertainment, as well as a rich mine of miscellaneous learning."

Of his own book he has this to say : "... a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgement, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, phantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry; I confess all..." But don't believe him, he's in one of his irascible moods and exaggerating. In fact it's a marvelous book.

Here's a bit more of the crusty Burton I love; it's on his fellow scholars : "Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers."

And here is Burton warming to the subject of contemporary theologians : "Theologasters, if they can but pay ... proceed to the very highest degrees. Hence it comes that such a pack of vile buffoons, ignoramuses wandering in the twilight of learning, ghosts of clergymen, itinerant quacks, dolts, clods, asses, mere cattle, intrude with unwashed feet upon the sacred precincts of Theology, bringing with them nothing save brazen impudence, and some hackneyed quillets and scholastic trifles not good enough for a crowd at a street corner."

Finally a passage I can't resist quoting which shows something of Burton's prose at its best, though I leave you to guess the subject: "... with this tempest of contention the serenity of charity is overclouded, and there be too many spirits conjured up already in this kind in all sciences, and more than we can tell how to lay, which do so furiously rage, and keep such a racket, that as Fabius said, "It had been much better for some of them to have been born dumb, and altogether illiterate, than so far to dote to their own destruction."

To fully appreciate these quotations you would have to see them in context, and I'm conscious of having touched on only one of his many moods and aspects. But a taste for Burton isn't difficult to acquire. He's a mine of curious learning. When in full stride he can be very funny, and it's easy to share his feelings as he often seems to be describing, not so much his own world as today's.

But he does demand stamina. His prose overwhelms and washes over us like a huge tsunami, and for that reason he's probably best taken in small doses. If you are unfamiliar with his work and were to approach him with that in mind, you might find that (as is the case with Montaigne, a very different writer) you had discovered not so much a book as a companion for life.

Gass is a dazzling writer, vastly too dazzling sometimes. Buy Omensetter's Luck, if you have not read it, plus click on In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & plead for reprinting. The first book of Gass litcrit, Fiction and the Figures of Life, in which Gass wonders about the wisdom of writing like Gass would soon be writing himself, is also awfully interesting. Have a ball, if you just must buy this book, but know that you are contributing to general academic diddling.

A great read! This interesting study on language has the added benefit of shocking anyone who rudely reads a few lines over your shoulder.

This is one of my favorite books. I read at least five books a week, and this rates on my top 10. I snap up copies in second-hand stores and occasionally find a new one to buy (or order). I am dismayed that the publisher has let it go out of print again. This is a book that you can open at any page and find something to delight you. Blue is the saddest mood, but reading about the blues here, even when your own blues are so blue they're black, will cheer you up. If you're already in an up mood, you'll go even higher. Stylistically impressive. Gass the novelist gives very little foretaste of this book. Delight yourself and read one of the best books of this century before the century is gone. If you've never read non-fiction outside of school, this is the place to start.

This book changed the way I look at a coffee table. It changed the way I look at fonts. It must be read, browsed and left out for others to browse. Leave it in the bathroom and see what happens. You will learn much about your guests as they sit on the pot

Glad he dares to criticize Mitchell, among others. Major flaw?
Completely avoids Norris & Keele's superior translations of the
Elegies and Sonnets.

It may seem odd that a book about translating Rainer Maria Rilke would be a good place to start encountering the poet.

But Rilke is not only a brilliant poet, one of the greatest of the twentieth century, he is also difficult to approach. I read him on and off for ten years before I could see beyond what I thought was pretentious esthetic posturing. (Now, like so many others, I see Rilke as one of the great meditators on art and life, someone who reveals us to ourselves with a depth and clarity that few -- if any -- can equal.)

Here, in sum, is why this book is so wonderful. William Gass has read, and struggled with, and been guided by, Rainier Maria Rilke all his life. In many ways, he tells us, he has been clolser to Rilke than any other human being. And now, after a half century of that intimate relationship, he tells us who this literary 'friend' is, what his life has been, what he has gone through, what he has achieved -- and why we should care. There can be no more important book for any of us to write: 'this is what I cared most about in my life, this is what I learned from that caring.'

This is what Willam H. Gass, a major American novelist, does in his book:
-- He provides a brilliant short biography of Rilke
-- He explicates, effortlessly, some of his shorter lyrics, so that the reader can understand what Rilke does and what is at stake in his poems.
-- He teaches us, through a long but not boring chapter on translation, just how complex and apt Rilke's language is. That is not small accomplishment, since Rilke seems to sing so effortlessly that it easy to overlook how much is going on in each phrase.
-- He knows what is best in Rilke, focusing on the revolutionary "New Poems," the amazing "Requiem" to Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Rilke's towering achievement, the "Duino Elegies."
-- He, by following Rilke's artistic career with all its hesitations and confusions, helps us to understand how the "Elegies" are discovery and revelation: not just for us, but for the poet himself.
-- He provides us with fine translations of many Rilke poems, including the "Elegies."

The book Gass has written is a rich and satisfying way to enter into Rilke's poetry. It is as if one's grandfather sat down under a shady tree one bright and sunny summer morning, and began, "The love of my life has been...." and then spentthe rest of the day speaking in warm and intimate ways about that love and what it has meant to his life.

Just as that would be a marvelous day, so this is a marvelous and unforgettable book

For those of us who have been caught in the overwhelming force of the Duino Elegies or the Sonnets for Orpheus, William Gass's short book of reflections explores the life that brought forth such poignant works. After reading what moves from essay to biography to personal response, I found myself understanding the trials that Rilke endured and the concerns that he faced each day. I could not help but grow closer to Rilke and his work, as Gass's masterful language found the perfect word, the perfect thought, and the perfect explanation for what made Rilke's poetry so powerful. The book carries an unfortunate title, because ultimately it is Gass's account of the life, the poetry, and the symbols that permeated Rilke's ouvre, not Gass's translation efforts, which remain sharp in my memory. This book is not for the casual reader, but for those who are truly moved by Rilke's work, for those seeking a deeper understanding and appreciation of it.

Having several times emerged, soul intact, out the other end of author Gass's novel--I have read the book thrice over--nothing could be clearer than that his tunnel DOES have a beginning, as it likewise is posessed of an end. Its source is the foetidly teeming cesspool of its author's aesthetically blissful, honorably loathsome mind. Its terminus--having looped its way in non-linear transit, two steps forward, one back--the catchbasin of its reader's. Kafka's abyss, Melville's whale, Joyce's Dublin, Faulkner's Yoknapatawha, Lowry's volcano, Pynchon's movie theater, now Gass's tunnel. This is a vastly uplifting, profoundly entertaining work of art, a tour de force performance, as are all Gassian works, that succeeds in being innovative and instructive at once. Does it require "close" reading? Is it subject to multiple interpretations? Is it an exercise in form over content? Perhaps. What it requires moreso is the reader's willingness to experience its text as an act of music, as it is one of architecture. Gass typically is taken to task for "playing God" with his readers, for demanding THEIR surrender to HIS art. In fact, that is precisely what he does, and it is that alchemical quality that renders his work so divine. It is not everyday, after all, that a writer can so miraculously convert dross to gold. That "The Tunnel," more's the pity, is not for everyone, is scarcely its author's fault. We have a habit, as readers, of looking our best gifthorses in the mouth, and this novel, the writer's masterwork, is nothing if not a gift. He is a national treasure, William Howard Gass, and each of his sentences is a gesture of generosity. At last, however hateful, "The Tunnel" is that rarest of creations, a thing of sublime and subterranean beauty, one that cuts with unflinching grace and honesty against the grain of its own self-created ground. Those who fail to recognize this are no more deserving of blame than are the tone-deaf for having tin ears, but they are, perhaps, owed our condolences. Is life a tunnel? A tunnel life? Might both be true? Dig into this novel, delve, dredge, quarry, excavate. The answer awaits.

William Frederick Kohler, the protagonist of William Gass' "The Tunnel," is a loathsome, despicable, misanthropic college professor ranting at his wife, his colleagues, his children and his mistresses. The sheer genius of Gass' book is not merely that he breathes life into such a character, but that he makes him so pruriently fascinating. Gass took nearly 30 years to complete this book; the elegance and rhythm of the prose demonstrate his skilled craftsmanship throughout its nearly 700 pages. I can't wait to read it again.

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.