| Abstract | In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Jeffrey Pence Jeffrey Pence is Assistant Professor of English at Oberline College, where he teaches in the areas of contemporary literature, film and other media, and theory. His work has appeared in Public Culture, College Literature, and Film and Philosophy. Notes 1. Given Gass's prominence in American letters, and the public fact of his decades-long composition of The Tunnel, the novel was reviewed in an astonishingly wide array of journals. What is most interesting in these various first takes is how easy it is to dislike the book and how very difficult to articulate appreciation. Negative reviewers tend to use the work as an opportunity to attack larger cultural forces: one announces that "It's modernism's last gasp, and way too late" (James Wolcott, "Gass Attack," The New Criterion February 1995, 67); while another claims the book to be "a complete compendium of the vices of postmodern writing" (Robert Alter, "The Leveling Wind," The New Republic 27 March 1995, 29). Only a few critics seemed willing to embrace the novel without reservation (see, for example, Michael Dirda, "In the Dark Chambers of the Soul," Washington Post Book World 12 March 1995, 1+). For the most part, reviewers seem caught in the middle, simultaneously repulsed and attracted in a way that is almost agonizing: "a splendid, daunting, loathsome novel" (John Leonard, "Splendor in the Gass?" The Nation 20 March 20 1995, 390); "I discover that I am paralyzed. I find much in The Tunnel that I deplore, and much that I celebrate, and I cannot see that either cancels the other" (Sven Birkerts, "One for the Angry White Male," The Atlantic Monthly June 1995, 120). Along the same lines, see also Louis Menand's "Journey into the Dark," New York Review of Books 13 July 1995, 8-10. Works Cited Alter, Robert. "The Levelling Wind." The New Republic 27 March 1995: 29-32. Birkerts, Sven. "One for the Angry White Male." The Atlantic Monthly June 1995: 112-120. Dienstage, Joshua Foa. "Building the Temple of Memory: Hegel's Aesthetic Narrative of History." The Review of Politics 56.4 (1994): 697-728. [CrossRef] Dirda, Michael. "In the Dark Chambers of the Soul." Washington Post Book World 12 March 1995: 1+. Farais, Victor. Heidegger and Nazism. Ed. Joseph Margolis and Tom Rockmore. Trans. Paul Burrel with Dominic Di Bernardi. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1989. Gass, William. Finding a Form. New York: Knopf, 1996. Gass, William. Habitations of the Word. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. Gass, William. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. New York: Harper and Row, 1968. Gass, William. The Tunnel. New York: Harper Perrenial, 1995. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. Kant, Immanuel. "Critique of Judgment." Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed. Hazard Adams. Trans. J.H. Bernard. Revised ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992 (1790). 375-393. Leonard, John. "Splendor in the Gass." The Nation 20 March 1995: 388-390. Lyotard, Jean-François. "Heidegger and 'the jews.'" Political Writings. Trans. Bill Readings and Kevin Paul. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 (1989). 135-147. Lyotard, Jean-François. Peregrinations. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979. Salzman, Arthur M. "Language and Conscience: An Interview with William Gass." The Review of Contemporary Fiction 11.3 (Fall 1991): 15-28. Wolcott, James. "Gass Attack." The New Criterion February 1995: 63-67. Copyright © 2000 JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory Project MUSE® - View Citation MLA APA Chicago Endnote Jeffrey Pence. "After Monumentality: Narrative as a Technology of Memory in William Gass's The Tunnel." Journal of Narrative Theory 30.1 (2000): 96-126. Project MUSE. Web. 25 Jan. 2013. . Pence, J.(2000). After Monumentality: Narrative as a Technology of Memory in William Gass's The Tunnel. Journal of Narrative Theory 30(1), 96-126. Eastern Michigan University. Retrieved January 25, 2013, from Project MUSE database. Jeffrey Pence. "After Monumentality: Narrative as a Technology of Memory in William Gass's The Tunnel." Journal of Narrative Theory 30, no. 1 (2000): 96-126. http://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed...
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