Next Season's Two Month Review Will Feature . . .

After finishing Vineland by Thomas Pynchon last week, it’s time to announce the next season of the Two Month Review podcast. Generally, we’ve been announcing three at once, since each of us—myself, Brian Wood, Kaija Straumanis—gets a selection, but we’re looking into the actual, physical availability of a couple options, so for now, I’m just going to announce that the next book we’ll be reading is: The Tunnel by William H. Gass.

This is Brian’s selection, and here’s what he has to say about it:

The Tunnel is one of those books I know I’m supposed to have read, but really didn’t want to wrestle with. With the free world going to hell, it seems like a good time wrestle.

Which tracks. Fascism is all the rage these days (ugh), and Gass’s book is one of the most important and beloved of the twentieth-century.

The Tunnel was first published in 1995 by Knopf with this iconic cover:

It was Gass’s fourth work of fiction, following on Omensetter’s Luck (1966; a novel David Foster Wallace once included in a course on books he hadn’t finished), In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968; stories), and Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife (1968; novella/art project).

It went on to win the American Book Award in 1996 and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner. Given its length, complexity, main topic, etc., this is a little bit surprising, but not as surprising as the fact that Dalkey Archive Press was able to get the reprint rights in 1999—a mere four years later.

This was the second Gass book to be reprinted by Dalkey, the first being Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife in an edition that was banned for sale in Singapore, and of particular humor due to the existence of Wm. Masters, Inc., an HVAC company in Normal, IL where Dalkey was based.

Anyway, The Tunnel has been a massive smash for Dalkey. In fact, in July 2024, it was the 8th best-selling title of all time, just behind The Recognitions by William Gaddis, an author Gass is frequently associated with. (Especially since Gass wrote the introduction for the Penguin Classics edition of The Recognitions.) It was even made into the one and only audiobook that Dalkey ever produced—a Lannan Foundation funded project that Gass read himself, and which Jeremy Davies worked on and I promoted and sold to bookstores. It’s an interesting