So this weekend I started auditing William Gass’s novel The Tunnel on mp3, read by the author: Sonorous, strange, ugly, beautiful, poetic, abyssal, phallic, anal, fragmented, rich. Here he is in 2007 reading from the beast of a book at The Village Voice Bookshop in Paris (RIP). More on The Tunnel.
William H. Gass Reads from His Novel The Tunnel (Video)
Biblioklept 
Have you read much Gass? The Tunnel isn’t my absolute favorite, though it’s one of those books I open from time to time and am awed by in its sheer size and ambition. And its sentences. But Omensetter’s Luck, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and his writing on writing (Fiction and the Figures of Life, The World within the Word, etc) are absolutely incomparable. He’s one of those writers who I return to again and again for something like nourishment; he has single sentences that say more than a lot of novels.
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I’ve read Omensetter’s Luck (on DFW’s recommendation, like a lot of people), and I’ve read some of his essays and introductions. I found The Tunnel mp3s and started them this weekend—the language is highly poetic, and lends itself reading aloud—but the meandering “plot” is a bit frustrating (usually plot-driven works make for better audiobooks, in my opinion).
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I came to Gass thru ‘The Tunnel.’ Thirty years he spent on the tome, which is incredible. His Bookworm interviews are great if you have the time. Thanks for posting this. I hadn’t seen the video on YouTube before.
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@ biblioklept, where did you find those tunnel mp3s? been looking everywhere to help me along
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https://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/the-tunnel-read-by-william-h-gass-2/
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