If Gass entertained any escape fantasies, however, The Tunnel does not indulge them. It’s the big, the biggest, Man Alone in a House story. It’s an anti–systems novel, uninterested in conspiracist linkages, fantasias of historical causality, politics, even money; it’s got no reportage, no news. It’s a novel of minor academic failure but invites no pity or nostalgia — it’s the anti-Stoner, that’s for sure.