The Tunnel (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: William H. Gass
- First Published: 1995
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The 1960’s
- Setting: A Midwestern university
- Principal Characters: William Frederick Kohler, Martha, Magus Tabor, His mother and father, Carl, Another son, Charles Clarence Culp, Planmantee, Walter Henry Herschel, Tommaso Governali, Lou, Susu
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life
- Locales: Indiana
The central figure and nonstop voice of The Tunnel is William Frederick Kohler, a history professor at a major Midwestern university. Of distant German ancestry, Kohler studied in Germany during the 1930’s and was later a consultant during the famous Nuremberg Trials, after which he wrote a book that made many critics think that he was not completely unsympathetic to the Nazis. Yet William Gass has said that the subject of The Tunnel is not political fascism but that it uses Adolf Hitler’s grand demonic plan for Germany and the world as a metaphoric backdrop for...
[The entire page is 2128 words long]
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