The Tunnel (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: William H. Gass
- First Published: 1995
- Type of Plot: Modernism
- Time of Work: 1967
- Setting: A college town in Indiana
- Principal Characters: William Frederick Kohler, Martha Kohler, Margaret Kohler, Frederick Kohler, Lou, Magus Tabor, Planmatee, Culp, Governali, Herschel
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life
- Locales: Indiana
The Novel
The Tunnel is told in the first person by a middle-aged history professor who has just completed his major work, Guilt and Innocence in Hitler’s Germany. He now wishes to conclude the project by writing the introduction, but he is seized by some paralysis of the soul and writes, instead, the contorted story of his own embittered life and a meditation on history and the writing of history. The story loops backward and forward to the recent end of his affair with Lou, his family tree, his childhood, his student days in prewar Germany, his loveless...
[The entire page is 2094 words long]
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