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Book reviews for "Abish,_Walter" sorted by average review score:

How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es
Published in Paperback by W.W. Norton & Company (December, 1980)
Author: Walter Abish
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Important, resonant, devastating.
If you've considered the case Sebald makes in _On the Natural History of Destruction_ you may wish also to consider the other "amnesia" Germany has embraced. Perhaps some feel that now is the time for Germany to step forward and claim its rightful place among the victims of the 20th Century's excesses...well, more of us don't, and this book is a good illustration of why. Postwar Germany's relationship to itself, to its history, to the war, are explored here subtly and comically. The past, which literally resurfaces in a model postwar town designed to evoke nothing more than the antithesis of Nazism, is draped over this brilliant book. At what cost freedom? At what cost revolution? At what cost order? At what cost comfort? At what cost homogeneity? All of these questions are addressed, the answers filtered through a prism that unstintingly insists that Germany must be defined by its Nazi past no matter what.

Very German Indeed
Walter Abish has a reputation for writing experimental fiction and much of his work is not all that accessible but this novel will appeal to readers of both experimental fiction and readers who like a solid plot and believable characters as the book treads ground familiar enough to appeal to the reader with a taste for tradtional novels and yet the psychologies studied are quite modern and so the reader of experimental fiction will find much to admire as well. Abish is an American and this book won the most prestigious American book award(PEN/Faulkner) in the year of its release 1981 but the authors that come to mind when reading HOW GERMAN IS IT are German or Austrian. The lead character is named Ulrich and any lover of German language literature will immediately think Robert Musil when hearing that name. In a way the book is reminiscent of Musil's Man Without Qualities in that its lead character is a kind of cipher without any real identity of his own, at least not one that is readily apparent. Abish's Ulrich is an author and throughout the book Abish has different characters in his book comment on how unreliable authors are. This is kind of a modernist joke but one that gains in resonance as the book progresses. Abish writes in a way that may remind some of Kundera but without the humor, and without the hip 60's sensibility. Like Kundera however he places his characters in very specific historic contexts. For Abish however there is a kind of delayed reaction as the present of the novel is the late seventies but the historic context still defining each character relates back to the 1939-45 period. The truths and obsessions that define the German character that was so very evident in those years have never really vanished is Abish's conceit. And each character must deal with those truths in his own way and define him/herself against them. In addition there is the irony/ambiguity in the title that suggests or asks if these are just German obsessions or are these obsessions shared by all modern capitalist societies. But all is done below the surface as Abish reveals all very subtly through his characters which he flushes out only very slowly and this slow and gradual flushing out of each character is where the real appeal of the novel is. Who is really standing for what. It is not so easy to see or say who is on what side and who stands for what in the modern version of Germany. Not til the last page do you know the defining truth of the lead character. And it is a surprise which I did at no time see coming. A great psychological study of half a dozen characters told in a meticulous and deliberately paced prose which reveals this while concealing that. Virtually perfect in every way which makes this novels answer to its own question HOW GERMAN IS IT :very German indeed.

Highest Rating
Wow, when I first read this book it actually made me THINK about the characters when I was away from the book. I found myself wondering about these people, and still today (I read the book 3 years ago) it stands out as particularly memorable. This is incredible literature. One of the best novels dealing with the psychological effects of history. The story centers around a German man who must face his own culture in a variety of different ways, until he is forced to come to terms with it's Nazi past.


Alphabetical Africa (New Directions Book)
Published in Paperback by New Directions Publishing (June, 1974)
Author: Walter Abish
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The errors were not intentional
Years ago I wrote a paper on Alphabetical Africa that asserted, in part, that the "story" struggled to express itself through the alphabetical artifice, some evidence of which was to be found in the erroneous use of words beginning with disallowed letters. Someone who knew Abish mentioned this to him at a party, and he replied "You're kidding! My editor and I went over it again and again to make sure there weren't any errors!" So viva la story!

Bravo, with reservations
The reviewer below has given a fine summary of the book, and is, for the most part, correct on all accounts. This is precisely the kind of novel that can revitalize fiction again, save it from simply providing subject matter, "interesting" or"meaningful" stories (which most ofter turn out to be neither). Alphabetical Africa is a commendable novel simply for what its form is, for the composition that makes it Art rather than mass-marketable fiction. It deserves applause and merits reading.However, it could've been better. Maybe it needed more planning, maybe it needed to be even more radical. Despite being so overtly experimental, it remains burdened by highly conventional narrative expectations. Given the constraints of the form, the narrative, though it's certainly full of surprises, isn't that fulfilling.Also worth noting in the "could've been better" category: I agree with the reviewer below that one "error" serves as a pleasure to the reader, like a insider's wink from the author. However, once I found a fourth "error" in Alphabetical Africa, I began to feel that the author wasn't winking, his eye was twitching involuntarily.Great pioneering work, but not quite a great novel.

Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
Alliterative Analogies, assertively assembled, appear aplenty, appropriately, apt and artful, absorbing attention ad infinitum. This could be a fitting summary of Abish's stunningly "now" novel, written almost a quarter of a century ago with a linguistic device concocted between Kabbala and alliteration. Chapter 1 is composed with words beginning only with the letter A, Chapter 2 with A and B and so on until chapter 27, when Z first, then chapter by chapter all other letters, are progressively subtracted. In spite of a scheme tracing back to the beginning of written literature, the novel tells of deeds and characters so surprisingly contemporary, they may have been culled from today's headlines: polysexually inclined thugs hide in Africa after a crime spree, with the Author in pursuit of the woman who betrayed them. Chasing after the thugs from country to country, we are introduced to a ruler queen transvestite, war and genocide, corrupted burocrats and soldiers, rampant corruption in a landscape still in hot air, where sparsely assembled people wollow in African Indolence. All is narrated with poetic detachment, in a dimension between joke and dream that implies social, political and historical commentary with what appears linguistical accidentality: it is just that the words were limited by my artifice, reader, the Author seems to smile. No harm intended. Perhaps: the scenario may have seemed so far fetched in 1974, to have been deemed the product of unabridged fantasy. Great art, when unhindered, relates to the whole of time, in all tenses. While amusing, Abish has managed a ponderous read, which meandering on through verisimilar everyday history of attitudes and practices, inserts deep philosophical reflections as light as the puns enclosing them and extends like a prophecy to contemporary events. Attentive readers will delight in finding the one slip from the add-subtract letter scheme. And wonder: was it accidental? "In order to be perfect, all I lack is a defect" goes an ancient italian folk ironic couplet.


99, the new meaning
Published in Unknown Binding by Burning Deck ()
Author: Walter Abish
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Interesting exploration but...
I'm never sure how to respond to experimental found text books. They are interesting as an exercise - especially to observe one's response to texts out of their context. However, rarely do they work as literature in their own right - at least in the sense of being of interest in 500 years. When they work, I still consider them emphemeral.

99: The New Meaning is not an exception. The provision of the number of words in each extract appears to add no value other than insuring the reader correctly identify when the extracted text begins. In this particular case, I found myself uncomfortable with the European-centric text; in some manner, it caused me to read the text as an "inside literati" text.

In short, the text is worth reading as experimental text but not particularly a original experiment.


Conjunctions: 10
Published in Paperback by David R Godine (May, 1987)
Authors: Bradford Morrow, Ann Lauterbach, and Walter Abish
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Conjunctions: 14: Bi-Annual Volumes of New Writing
Published in Paperback by Collier Books (January, 1990)
Authors: Bradford Morrow, Walter Abish, and Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge
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Conjunctions: Bi-Annual Volumes of New Writing
Published in Hardcover by Conjunctions (March, 1987)
Authors: Bradford Morrow, Ann Lauterbach, and Walter Abish
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Contemporary American Fiction
Published in Paperback by Sun & Moon Press (September, 1983)
Authors: Walter Abish and John Ashbery
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Double Vision
Published in Hardcover by Knopf (February, 2004)
Author: Walter Abish
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Eclipse Fever
Published in Paperback by Faber Faber Inc ()
Author: Walter Abish
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How German Is It
Published in Hardcover by Prometheus Books (October, 1982)
Author: Walter Abish
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