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:
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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!
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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
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More Than A Boys’ Club: Suggested Further Reading
Influences & Contemporaries of William H. Gass and Novels which Correspond with The Tunnel
by Morgan English
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MODERNIST INFLUENCES (AND PREDECESSORS):
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880),* James Joyce (1882-1941)*, Franz Kafka (1883-1924),* Thomas Mann (1875-1955),* Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926),* W.B. Yeats (1865-1939),* William Faulkner (1897-1962); Samuel Beckett (1906-1989),* Ralph Ellison (1913-1994), Richard Wright (1908-1960), Walker Percy (1916-1990); Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977),* Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)*
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AMERICAN LATE MODERNISM TO POSTMODERNISM:
William Gaddis: 1922-1998
The Recognitions, 1955 (Dalkey Archive Press)
JR, 1975 (Dalkey Archive Press)
Erudite, dark, humanistic
Kurt Vonnegut: 1922-2007
Cat’s Cradle, 1963
Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969
Dark humor, satirical, countercultural
William H. Gass: 1924-2017
The Tunnel, 1995 (Dalkey Archive Press) begun circa 1965;
Gass was influenced by the modernists, and is himself considered pre-postmodern, a late modernist, or in Gass’s own words, a “decayed modernist”
John Barth: 1930-2024
The Floating Opera, 1956 (Dalkey Archive Press)
The Sot-Weed Factor, 1960 (Dalkey Archive Press)
Chimera, 1972 (Dalkey Archive Press)
Historical, bawdy, metafictional, erudite
Robert Coover: 1932-2024
The Public Burning, 1977
Metafictional, experimental
Thomas Pynchon: 1937—
Gravity’s Rainbow, 1973
The Crying of Lot 49, 1965
Metafictional, grim, historical
Ishmael Reed: 1938—
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, 1969 (Dalkey Archive Press)
Mumbo Jumbo, 1972
Experimental, fragmented, lyrical, historical
Don DeLillo: 1936—
Americana, 1971
White Noise, 1985
Mao II, 1991
Underworld, 1997
Dark, sociological
Samuel Delaney: 1942—
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, 1999
Historical, sociological, experimental
David Foster Wallace: 1962-2008
Infinite Jest, 1996
Maximalist, dark humor
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| AMERICAN LATE MODERNISM TO POSTMODERNISM:
Anaïs Nin: 1903-1977
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1966
Henry and June, 1986
Experimental, psychological, sociological
Marguerite Young: 1908-1995
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, 1965 (Dalkey Archive Press)
Maximalist, experimental
Elizabeth Hardwick: 1916-2007
Sleepless Nights, 1979
Poetic prose, fragmentation; parataxis, oxymoron and catachresis
Renata Adler (1938—)
Speedboat, 1976
Pitch Dark, 1983
Journalistic, lyrical, nonlinear
Toni Morrison (1931-2019)
Song of Solomon, 1977
Beloved, 1987
Jazz, 1992
Metaphysical, historical; see Gass’s remarks on Morrison, 1991
Kathy Acker: 1947-1997
New York City in 1979, 1981
Blood and Guts in High School, 1984
Empire of the Senseless, 1988
Experimental, irreverent; fragmentation; consider the “literature of exhaustion” in Acker and Barth, Acker and Pynchon, Acker and Gass
Kathrine Dunn: 1945-2016
Attic, 1969
Truck, 1971
Geek Love, 1989
Toad, 2022 (posthumous)
Countercultural, dark humor; compared to and anthologized with Vonnegut
Joy Williams, 1944—
State of Grace, 1973
The Changeling, 1978
The Quick and the Dead, 2000
Concerning the Future of Souls, 2024
Philosophical, metaphysical, dark
Carole Maso: 1956—
Ava, 1991 (Dalkey Archive Press)
Experimental, poetic, postmodern; often taught in university courses alongside John Barth and Thomas Pynchon
Chris Kraus, 1955—
I Love Dick, 1997
Aliens & Anorexia, 2000
Metafictional, maximalist, philosophical
Helen DeWitt: 1957—
The Last Samurai, 2000
Lightning Rods, 2011
Your Name Here, 2025 (Dalkey Archive Press)
Experimental, maximalist, erudite, humorous, irreverent
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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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