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Walter Abish

Walter Abish born on December 24, 1931 . He is an American author of experimental novels and short stories.

Abish was born in Vienna, Austria. At a young age, his family fled from the Nazis, traveling first to Italy and Nice before settling in Shanghai from 1940 to 1949. In 1949, they moved to Israel, where Abish served in the army and developed an interest in writing. He moved to the United States in 1957 and became an American citizen in 1960. Since 1975, Abish has taught at several eastern universities and colleges. Abish received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1981 for his book How German Is It . He has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.

Walter Abish is an Austrian-born American novelist and short story writer. He is best known for his experimental novel Alphabetical Africa, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1975. Born in Vienna in 1931, Abish experienced life in Nazi-controlled Austria from a young age. He remained in Vienna with his family until his father's death in 1939. At the age of eight, he and his mother moved to Shanghai, China, where they remained until 1949.

Having experienced so much upheaval in his early life, Abish was determined to make a career out of writing, writing extensively throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He moved to New York in 1961 and became involved in the literary and arts community, developing relationships with influential figures such as Sigfried Giedion, Saul Bellow and John Cage. Abish's writing style is often characterized as postmodern and innovative, often being described as experimental.

Alphabetical Africa, published in 1974, is Abish's best known work, and is considered to be a major pioneer in surrealism and experimental literature. The novel tells the story of two African characters, A and Z, who are searching for the missing letter "Africa" amongst other lost and forgotten items. The narrative is unique in that every chapter is comprised of a single sentence, that sentence being an alphabetic sequence that begins with the first letter of the novel's title and ends with X. This narrative structure demonstrates Abish's insistence on pushing literary conventions and challenging the reader, a theme present throughout much of his work.

Abish's writing has been highly praised by critics, with many noting the daring originality of Alphabetical Africa in particular. It has been analyzed by historians and sociologists who argue that it is a conscious critique of colonialism and imperialism in Africa. Others have suggested that the novel is an allegory for the Holocaust, noting the significance of the displacement of the characters.

In addition to Alphabetical Africa, Abish has written several other novels and short stories, and has been recognized with several high-profile awards. He is a recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Abish currently resides in New York City and is professor emeritus at the City University of New York.

Abish studied at the University of Tel Aviv and the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently earned an M.F.A from the University of Iowa. After graduating from Columbia University with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Abish accepted a teaching position at the University of Iowa.

In addition to his literary works, Abish has contributed to the fields of education and linguistics. He serves as the Director of the Graduate Linguistics Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has developed courses in applied and theoretical linguistics. He is also regarded as a leading authority on the sociolinguistic study of Hebrew.

In an interview, Abish stated that "Writing is a struggle to understand what's going on. The writer must make himself expressible, or else he can't communicate." This sentiment speaks to Abish's commitment to the power of literary expression and his ability to evoke its emotion in his works. With his innovative and emotionally complex writing, Walter Abish has proven himself to be one of the most respected authors in contemporary American literature.

Abish's work shows both imaginative and experimental elements. In Alphabetical Africa, for instance, the first chapter consists entirely of words beginning with the letter "A." In the second chapter, words beginning with "B" appear, and so on through the alphabet. In the Future Perfect is a collection of short stories where words are juxtaposed in unusual patterns.

Works

• Duel Site - 1970
• Alphabetical Africa - 1974
• Minds Meet - 1975
• In the Future Perfect - 1977
• How German Is It ( Wie deutsch ist es ) - 1980
• 99: The New Meaning - 1990
• Eclipse Fever - 1993
• Double Vision: A Self-Portrait - 2004