Tunnel Readers,

We knew The Tunnel would be big, but we never dreamed it would be this big. It's been over a month since publication, and copies are still flying off the shelves faster than we can print them. Reviews of this thirty-year-old book have popped up everywhere from literary institutions like  n+1 and the LA Review of Books to cool kid lit mags like Cleveland Review of Books and Hobart -- and we have it on good authority that there are more on the way.

In short, The Tunnel has become a genuine literary event, a testament at once to Bill Gass's towering genius and to the novel's ongoing relevance in a world that seems ever more stuffed with Kohlers. 

In case any brave souls have already descended into the depths of Gass's labyrinth and made their way out, we thought we'd send along a list of (what else?) more books. Gass's reading was broad; his work was influenced as much by Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf as it was by James Joyce and Rainer Maria Rilke; and his own influence over three generations of writers can be seen everywhere from Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace to Toni Morrison, Carole Maso, and Joy Williams. Perhaps to understand any single author requires a lifetime, or many lifetimes. Below, we're offering a few places to start. 

There is an account of The Tunnel as a devastating critique of the patriarchal family, one that traces a clear line between "the fascism of the heart" and "the character of the household tyrant," as Gass calls it in "How to Read The Tunnel". Today's contributor, Deep Vellum's own Morgan English, wants to honor this side of Gass's work, as well as his lifelong commitment to supporting the writing of women, by placing the standard male lineage into which he has been cast alongside the equally rich tradition of women's modernism and postmodernism with which he was ceaselessly engaged (and which has, in turn, ceaselessly engaged with him).

Those who have recently joined us may access the previous dispatches from this newsletter using the table of contents below:

Designing the Tunnel by William H. Gass

Selected Correspondence by Arthur M. Saltzman

A Small Apartment in Hell by Michael Silverblatt

Sweets, an excerpt from The Tunnel, by William H. Gass

A Girandole for Mr. Gass by Bradford Morrow

Second is Last by Richard Watson

Time to Eat Our Vegetables by James Webster

The Tunnel in the Age of Bad Men by A.V. Marraccini

Hiding from History by Katherine Packert Burke

On The Tunnel for Dalkey Archive Press by Joy Williams

Guilt and Innocence in America by Max Lawton

Big Books: An American Story by John Darnielle

How to Read The Tunnel by William H. Gass

A note on fulfillment:

As of today, 5/13, all existing orders of The Tunnel through the Dalkey Archive Press website have been shipped from our Dallas distribution center.

If you have ordered The Tunnel Reader in some form (either individually or as part The Tunnel Bundle), rest assured that it is also on the way. Copies will be received from the printer by the end of next week, and will go out the door to all orders immediately afterwards!

And don't worry, this is not the end of our damnable dig. Starting next month, The Tunnel Reader Newsletter will become The Dalkey Archive Essentials Newsletter -- your monthly source of deep dives into our latest Essentials titles, archival material and as well as new writing! First up will be Carole Maso's AVA, which will be publishing on July 21st, 2026 with a new introduction by the great Jamie Hood!

Until then, we are, and remain, sincerely,

Your friends at Dalkey Archive Press

More Than A Boys’ Club: Suggested Further Reading 

Influences & Contemporaries of William H. Gass and Novels which Correspond with The Tunnel

by Morgan English

Morgan English is a writer and editor. She was a finalist for the 2025 Jake Adam York Prize from Copper Nickel and Milkweed Editions and the recipient of The Florida Review’s 2021 Editors’ Award in Poetry. She contributed to Emily Mason: Unknown to Possibility, the first comprehensive volume on the life and art of Emily Mason (1932–2019), a post–New York School abstract painter, and has work forthcoming in The Kenyon Review and The Believer.

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