The conceit, instead, is twofold: William Kohler, a historian, has completed his work on the book GUILT AND INNOCENCE IN HITLER’S GERMANY and is struggling to write an introduction. Instead, in Shandean fashion, he spends the entire book distracting himself with reflections on his childhood, marriage, and academia… / …additionally, and minimally, in the fashion of Sterne’s Uncle Toby, Kohler is constructing not a miniature battlefield, but excavating a tunnel out of his basement office, I say minimally because very little of the text takes place in that present, in that basement, in that tunnel.

The tunnel instead, if you suffer my interpretation, is Kohler tunneling back through his life.

I have my own long and boring life to tunnel. I’ve run out of use for the borings of other people’s memory tunnels.

I started The Tunnel once, didn't get very far and put it down. Never got back around to it.