WALTER ABISH AND HIS LITERARY ARTS

Nitta Reiko

PSYART: Analyses of Cultural Productions: Papers of 30th Conference of Psyart Porto, 2013

Like many other writers, Walter Abish first tries out his literary style in short stories and then develops it in a longer work of fiction. This paper first demonstrates his original literary art in his five long works - Alphabetical Africa, How German Is It, 99: The New Meaning, Eclipse Fever, and Double Vision - and then discusses the characteristics commonly found in his different styles of fiction. Some of these characteristics are similar to what Postmodern thinkers such as Jean-François Lyotard and Frederic Jameson proclaim; however, Abish's liberal humanism, with his social and moral concerns, should instead be identified with what Theodor Adorno, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Terry Eagleton, philosophers profoundly influenced by the Holocaust, maintain. Though Abish's Jewish experience during World War II and just afterwards seems to function only as the material to produce an innovative fiction, its influence may well be recognized in the backbone of his writing.

English and American literature [ 930 ]

eng

i2ADS

author

[ISBN] 978-989-98745-2-7