William Gass's The Tunnel gets inside a single human being more honestly, brutally and hilariously than any novel I've ever read. As a seemingly unmediated expression of human consciousness, however, that also means it is plotless, circular and filled with steaming hot bile. I loved it. Of course, timing is everything, and perhaps I just hit it at exactly the right time. You could pick it up, read 100 pages and demand my dismissal from the human race. I couldn't defend myself. But if you're tired of banal domestic stories delivered with all the playfulness of an English Department meeting agenda recitation, or if you wouldn't mind luxuriating in the language of a man trained in philosophy but who defies that personal history by being relentlessly funny, or if maybe you just want some inspiration for delivering words in ways you'd never considered, Gass is the man. Yes, you'll have to endure interminable rants on his tiny peepee insecurities, interminable rants on the size of his wife's breasts and her unwillingness to sleep with him, and interminable rants on just about everything else, from his alchie mom to his bitter, arthritic dad to his colleagues (whom he loathes, all for different reasons) in the History Department, to his exploration of Germanness and the Nazi character, to his one great romantic encounter, to his office hour trysts, to, well, just about anything else that modern life has on display for him to rant about.

I can certainly understand why folks would hate this book and this author for writing it. Gass is the anti-Austen. He has no interest in linearity, in storytelling (in a classical sense, anyway- the book is strewn with stories, but they take the circuitous route), or in holding back anything in the name of common decency. It is a foul book, but it gets so many things right and in such delicious language that it's probably going to ruin other books for me for awhile. The Tunnel is one-of-a-kind and not for everyone, but if you'd like to see the inner depths of your miserable psyche delivered in ways certain to make you cringe and crack-up, then start digging.