Alphabetical Africa

by Walter Abish

Alphabetical Africa, Walter Abish's delightful first novel, is an extraordinary linguistic tour de force, high comedy set in an imaginary dark continent that expands and contracts with ineluctable precision, as one by one the author adds the letters of the alphabet to his book, and then subtracts them. While the "geoglyphic" African landscape forms and crumbles, it is, among other things, attacked by an army of driver ants, invaded by Zanzibar, painted orange by the transvestite Queen Quat of Tanzania, and becomes a hunting ground for a pair of murderous jewel thieves tracking down their nymphomaniac moll.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Africa, American, Literature, The United States Of America, Humor

152 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1974

About the author

Walter Abish was an American author of experimental novels and short stories.

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.

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.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alphabetical Africa is an experimental absurdist comedy on the side of literary formalism. 
While learning to read first thing we learn is alphabet… So following the great tradition of primers Walter Abish organizes his narration in the alphabetical order…

Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex’s admonition, against Allen’s angry assertion: another African amusement… anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa’s antipodal ant annexation.

In the A chapter only the words beginning with A are used… In the B chapter are used the words starting with A and B and so on…
Africa of the tale is a fantastic continent… Adventures and crime and love affairs are in abundance… Even the philosophy and history aren’t left untouched…

Xenophon showed a misplaced courage. Instead of founding a new city, or settling down, or simply heading for Africa, he and his cast of ten thousand headed back home, as if there existed no other alternative. Xenophon’s hold on history is clearly slipping. His tomb is cracking.

Anyway, in acquiring any knowledge, alphabet is the only point of departure.

[Megha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Abish adroitly actualizes Africa. Arts and ambiance. Ants, alligators and antelopes. And attractive Alva.

Brilliant, albeit a bit boring, alphabetical adventure amuses.

Cross continental chase after Alva carries author all around Africa. Characteristic African culture becomes apparent.

Demanding constraints delimit Africa's alphabetical boundaries.

Experimental aspects don't always dominate composition.

First few chapters are a bit constrained, as expected. Further chapters bring freedom and don't appear especially awkward.

Growing alphabetical bank also allows African country's expansion.

Hard earned alphabets birth fresh characters

'I' finally enables chronicler's appearance as a character himself.

Justifiably, I's entry brings changes in descriptive direction.

Keenly advancing, Abish accomplishes his experimentation goals admirably.

Linguistic gymnastics can't be enough for every literature lover, however. Likable content is always desirable.

Modes of communication - cuneiform codes, click lanuguages, communication across foreign dialects - form a frequent motif.

Narrative covers many aspects - murder, loot, chase, battles, ant extermination, colonization, foreign investors, changing African landscape and culture, amorous escapades - and much more.

Over all, it is fairly imaginative but it lacks focus and often digresses into abstraction.

Plot has to lose characters as their first name initial alphabet is dropped.

Quite often, a character's involvement is limited by his/her allowed presence.

Regardless, I enjoyed one particularly interesting element of Alphabetical Africa.

Second half methodically loses alphabets, and hence names of people and places are lost. Shrinking African landscape is mirrored in shrinking language and shrinking populace.

Technique of narration nicely parallels the content in this manner. Territory of Africa expands and contracts just as the language does.

Unfortuantely, Abish's innovative style doesn't make for an interesting read most of the time.

Vocabularic efforts are very impressive, I'll admit.

(Walter. Walter Abish . Well, I can finally be on first name terms with the author.)

Xeric environs of Africa are, however, at times reflected in the narrative since it is somewhat lacking in engagement.

You should read this only if you have a strong interest in experimental styles.

Zooming in and out effects do make for an interesting technique worth checking out.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suppose any review of this book has to explain the unusual form. I'll try to be brief: the first chapter is composed entirely with words that begin with the letter "a", the second with words beginning with either "a" or "b", and each successive chapter adds a letter until the 26th chapter (which can make use of words beginning with any letter) at which point the process reverses until we end back at "a".
Quite a few things surprised me about this book. First of all, I was surprised at how much sense Abish makes in the first chapter. Here is a sample sentence: "Ages ago an archaeologist, Albert, alias Arthur, ably attended an archaic African armchair affair at Antibes, attracting attention as an archeologist and atheist." Cool, huh?
Anyway, I was also surprised at how engaging this weird little formal experiment turns out to be. It is fascinating to watch a wildly all-over-the-place author struggle with his own self-imposed (and rather stringent) restrictions. Each chapter allows him an opportunity to unloose a whole new bank of words that you know he has just been dying to use from the beginning. He has to wait for the 9th chapter before he can write in the first person (what a nightmare for a metafictionist!) and you better believe he makes immediate use of that "I". And it isn't until "Y" that he gets to use the third person. The story is crazy too; it forms and disintegrates in time with the novel's language.
This book will delight all logophiles and bore the alphabetical crap out of anybody else.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe most people familiar with the Oulipo group are familiar with this book (Abish's first novel) and it's structure/limitation. For those unaware, it is composed of 52 chapters, named in ascending and then descending alphabetical order. The way they work is as such: in the first chapter (A) the words only begin with the letter A. In chapter B, words all start with A or B. And so on, to where more and more words are allowed as the book progresses to its apex. In the latter half of the book, the letters of each chapter correspond with the last time words beginning with that letter can be used. In this way the prose expands and then contracts throughout the book.

Some narrative quirks arise from this: the book is a first person narrative, but the narrator cannot make an appearance until chapter I, and then must disappear after the second chapter I (though Abish finds a way to allude to the first person narrative in the closing chapters). Of course, the word "the" can only be used between the two chapter T's (a limitation Perec and his translator both wrestled with in "A Void" - though of course Perec did have the feminine singular form available).

The plot also is restricted by these limitations: a central storyline revolves around a kidnapping and a murder, though these incidents can't be expanded upon until the relevant letters are allowed into the narrative. These sorts of limitations are played with adroitly by Abish, and add to the overall humor of the work. Most of the other humor borders on lunatic slapstick, and works in some parts, not so much at others.

In large part due the narrative limitations - of which I am in fact a bit in awe of - the prose and narrative never really gels, and some of the earlier and later chapters read more like alliterative word salad than propulsive narration, and can be appreciated for their formulation, but are not necessarily that enjoyable of a read.

As far as form and limitation go, as far as precise execution, this book succeeds admirably; but it manages to not be as good as the works by Perec or Brooke-Rose or Queneau as it lacks the easygoing humor and playfulness of those authors - they somehow managed to incorporate rigid and unforgiving limitation into their works, and still managed to produce works of literature that could stand on their own. Abish had produced a curiosity; it is well crafted, and worth discovering, but it is only as good as its limitation, nothing more.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike Perec and the letter ‘e,’ Abish uses constraints here to roll 360° through the aperture of sub-Saharan Africa and actually accomplishes something far more than stunt. By adopting this admittedly precious lipogrammatic structure, he’s able to populate the landscape in a way closest, in my mind, to “Genesis.” We see the closed fist of the world slowly, but with increasing languor, open and populate. Abish then runs the whole film fed backward to the closed fist, leaving his playful middle finger extended with his inimitable, well, Abishness. Beautiful bastard.

[Jim Elkins]

1. Why Form and Content Should Be Connected in Constrained Writing

This book isn't simply "in the line of writers such as Raymond Roussel, Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec and Harry Mathews," as Ashbery says in the back cover copy. That's because, unlike those authors, Abish does not try to match his stories with the constraints he gives himself. His linguistic constraints are "terrifying and irrefutable," as Ashbery notes (chapters from A to Z and back to A, each one containing only a subset of letters of the alphabet), but the stories he tells are carefree and sometimes funny.

I think this matters because in the Oulipo tradition, the stories that are told have some correspondence, in tone, philosophy, pointlessness, or absurdity, to the rules the authors impose on themselves. That correspondence is the glue that binds the books together: otherwise Perec and others could have simply taken existing novels or newspaper accounts (as Goldsmith and others do) and subjected them to predetermined rules. The lack of correspondence in "Alphabetical Africa" is its principal characteristic. After you have marveled at what he's done with his alphabetical rules and laughed at his stories, you're left wondering whether the two have collided randomly, or for surrealistic purpose, or whether, in fact, Abish never thought through the possible meanings of the lack of correspondence between his insouciant stories and his rigid rules. More on this at the end.

In Perec's "Life: A User's Guide" the elaborately constrained writing is in close harmony with the stories of the people in the apartment building. Just as the principal character tries to make a life that will sum to nothing, so the writer's constraints produce a distorted narrative that cannot conform to ordinary novels. In Roussel, the elaborate rules (which are, in contrast to Perec's, largely unknown, despite Roussel's own book on the subject) are in intricate and hidden harmony with the acephalic, obsessive, or autistic behavior of his principal characters and his narrators.

"Alphabetical Africa" has a sort of humor I recognize in other authors of the 1970s. He is interested in Africa's politics ("But can Alva's claims also cure Americans bombing Chad beaches. Anyhow, all concur America's angst cannot corrupt Chadians," p. 6), in the absurdity of the places he visits, and in the ridiculous continuation of colonial and tourist expectations, but he is insouciant about most of it. He is untroubled about mentioning that his characters take acid: they are who they are. The result is a politically invested but carefree tone that reminds me, in a different sphere, of Arlo Guthrie. He spins cliché plots about dictators, spies, and murders, and he weaves in tourist impressions and fears, all in a kind of deadpan colloquial collage.

Meanwhile, each chapter in the first half of the book adds another letter, and each chapter in the second half subtracts one, and the machinery of that expansion and contraction works alongside the stories but almost never to any determinate purpose. A reader watches the first letters of many words, and also attends to the stories. The result is not a surrealist juxtaposition, because it so often seems that Abish is simply trying to write well, in spite of his own constraints. The first chapter "M" is not exceptional in this regard:

"M
"My memory isn't accurate anymore. Mentioning my memory makes me feel insecure. A few months ago Alex and Allen kidnapped a jeweler in Antibes and killed him almost inadvertently..."

Because this is chapter "M," a reader will be watching for Abish to display as many m's as he can. So the second sentence here, with four m's, stands out. But the sentence immediately following serves the purpose of furthering one of his stories. So it is not clear how we are expected to attend to the alliterations. Are we to read as Oulipeans for part of one sentence, and then forget that regimen, and think instead about the plot? When "Alphabetical Africa" is funny, it is so in spite of these linguistic constraints. (The first chapter "C" is an excellent example: it's really funny, and doesn't suffer, but also doesn't gain, by being constrained to words beginning with "a," "b," or "c.") Same when it's violent, or absurdist, or intentionally hackneyed.

The principal expressive option here would be surrealism: the stories would be juxtaposed in unexpected and irrational ways with the language used to express them. But that does not happen often, or consistently, and sometimes it seems not to happen intentionally. In most cases, Abish's narrator seems to have one set of concerns, and his compositor another.

In the end, it seemed to me that this is a lighthearted spoof about American attitudes to Africa in the 1970s, placed, for reasons I think the author himself never entirely analyzed, into the "terrifying and irrefutable" Procrustean frame of a linguistic game. It is an example of a book that reveals a crucial criterion for constrained writing: there needs to be a nameable connection between the linguistic constraint and whatever stories are being told. That connection can be a contrast (irrational, surrealist, or satiric) or a harmonious correspondence (between constrained lives and rule-bound writing, between partly unknowable psychologies and partly private constraints) -- but it has to be something the reader can conclude was planned and controlled, or at least observed, by the writer.

*

Reading this on Facebook July 2014, Andrei Molotiu noted that some Oulipo writers seem to be great "despite" their Oulipean interests. I might not be interested in such a writer. I think there should be a strong connection between story and constraints: it can be a contrast, dissociation, or affinity, but it has to work as a whole: otherwise it seems to me the interest of any constraint is diminished. Note the constraint in this book, by itself, isn't interesting. Anyone can invent a constraint: not everyone can write a book based on a constraint, but that's not an especially interesting goal. Relatively few people can figure out how to link or contrast the constraint to the material (story, subject matter, voice, mood).

And just to be clear about the argument I'm proposing: I am not especially interested in organic, harmonious, "coherent" (Ruskin's word) relationships between form and content, or in the humanist or romantic traditions that require such relationships. I do find I want the relationship between form and content to be acknowledged in some manner: form and content can exhibit a radical disconnection, disharmony, incoherence, randomness, surrealism, or irrationalism; regardless of the kind of relationship, I am most engaged when the author (or the narrator, or the text) demonstrates that the problem has been considered. Abish doesn't seem to notice, or care.

[Phillip Freedenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an admitted maximalist myself, Walter Abish’s Alphabetical Africa (1974) has come as an extremely rewarding reading experience that deals brilliantly with both experimentation and constraint (theoretical positions of omission/addition) equally in a way that uses a uniquely constructed set of limitations or patterns to achieve potentially new outcomes in artistic and literary possibility. To me this idea of artistic constriction/restraint reminds me very much for example of what Lars von Trier and Harmony Korine were doing in some of their films under the ideology of Dogma 95, or in literature this form reminds me of what authors such as Georges Perec and Jacques Roubaud were doing in some of their books under the ideology of Oulipo. I highly recommend this book to experience what a powerful new narrative structure/experience this methodology can achieve. I love both sides of this in terms of pure creative dichotomy from Claude Debussy to Ornette Coleman, or The Beatles to John Zorn, Charles Bukowski to Arno Schmidt as examples of artistic dynamics that both in their technique achieve new perceptions and experiences concerning experimentation with the raw materials of both form and felling. Alphabetical Africa archives this incredibly in transforming the narrative framework to overtly amend the reader’s expectations and perceptions. In the book Abish Ascends then descends chapters A-Z, then Z-A, upon ascension he can only use words that begin with the “letter chapter” that has already occurred, (e.g.) in A, he can only use words that begin with the letter A, in B he can then add using only lettered words that begin with A, or B, in C he can use words that begin with A, B, or C, and on with the same rule through to the descent Z-A when he removes chapter specific “lettered” words as he works toward the symmetry of the closing chapter A when, like the opening chapter, he can only use words that start with the letter A. Alphabetical Africa is both a technical as well as an experiential celebration of both language and form that reawakens the reader’s relationship with how the shape of the stories we tell can change the way that we experience the world!

Phillip Freedenberg

Author of America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic

Buffalo, NY
September 2022

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a bizarre book. I mean, you know going in that a book with this format is going to be bizarre, but it’s even more bizarre than it had to be.

The format of the book is why you pick it up, of course. The first chapter of the book only contains words that begin with the letter A, the second chapter words that begin with A or B, the third chapter with A, B, or C, and so forth. After the 26th chapter, which uses all 26 letters like a normal book, each subsequent chapter loses one letter (the 27th chapter uses every letter except Z, the 28th chapter uses every letter except Z and Y, etc.).

The sentences themselves are impressively comprehensible. For example, in a chapter allowing only words beginning with A, B, and C, the author (who only becomes a character once the letter “I” is introduced, for obvious reasons) has been kidnapped by ants. ”Am appeasing ants by being awfully appreciative about bench and bedding, and also by appearing appropriately apologetic.”

But I wouldn’t say the plot itself is fully coherent, or even that there’s really a plot at all. There are flashes of scenes, involving the three main characters (the hypersexualized and somewhat airheaded Alva, racist and sadistic Alex, and Alex’s partner in crime, Allen), with many many random characters popping up, sometimes just for that chapter.

Still, it’s a fun language experiment. You feel the anxiety of the author’s constraints in each chapter, with that anxiety lessening more with each subsequent chapter as letters are added on. The story flows more freely and you find yourself feeling more at ease, in a familiar place—only to have that familiarity slowly taken from you and the unease setting back in, as you pass the halfway point, the process reverses, and you begin to lose letters again.

But it's not an emotionally meaningful book, it doesn't have much value beyond the mildly interesting commentary on language, and it's definitely not a reread. So I'm leaving it with 2 stars.

[Yu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Africa is a mysterious place.

Boring with all the ants and antelopes and the click language, because it feels plain.

Continent probably is a proper word for this huge riddle.

Duel with words seems not the only job for the writer.

Enjoyed the book, but the plot is obscure.

Form did matter in a creative writing, at least in this case, the author convinced me. Before, I don't quite believe it.

German in the book is attractive to me, I believe it says something.

High expectation of the book may bring down the reception.

I agree, as the narrative perspective, adding "I" helps a lot. I was waiting for that letter.

Joint description with post modern broken phrases, it feels like watching a play with fast pace rhythm.

Killing becomes something usual and routine, again, the exposure of the secret continent.

Lack of smoothness. The book is hard to read, needless to say to read out loud.

Most of the characters in the book is not that necessary, except Alva, ok, Alex and Allen "survivied" till the end, they also can count.

None of the characters is impressive, only the narrator "I", and Alva...

Oeuvre is mentioned a lot of time, it also feels like a metafiction.

Post modern way of creative writing, this way could inspire, but also, I feel my imagination is as well constrained.

Quantitatively speaking, the constrain writing limits the length of each chapter.

Rhythm is the best part. The last chapter as well as several chapters before. The repeating words match the drum, colorful African drum.

Solid based idea and geist, this cannot be ignored.

Tolerance of the difficulties in reading the whole book could also be considered as one aspect of reception?

Unlike a regular book, namely Conrad's, it is a master piece in terms of cultural narratology.

Vocabulary book with a main idea, to be short.

Women's roles in Africa should be as important as animals, no?

Xenophobia should be a strong feeling while I expect from him to talk about in the X.

Yet it is a fairly good book.

Zoo is another image linked to Africa. The author links images, broken images together with individual alphabet, the shrinking Africa is manipulated by the significant others, by us.

I was thinking back and forth about how many starts I should give to this book. I got to this book from Georges Perec's A Void, and they say Walter Abish is also a guru in lipogram. So I tried. In the beginning, it is a little bit hard to read, because of all the constrains. After three or five letters, I forced myself to read the book out loud. I don't know if any readers have ever tried it, but it is a bit hard, like tongue twister somehow. But, as long as I started to read the book out loud, I feel the content itself. The form and style of this book is really embedded in the shrinking Africa. The story was grasping. And even the constrains make sentence more beautiful. I begin to applause for the technics. When I get to the descending part of letters, it gets a bit annoyed. In the last chapter, I told myself, this is a four-star book, I am not giving it five stars!!! However, I decided to go back to Chapter one, with all the A, and it feels very nature, so 5 star it is.

Good lines: "But even invented countries follow a common need, as each country heads for a common memory, a common destiny, a common materiality." --p35

Africa's mind is justifiably obstinate about its dislike of all foreign occupation of its land. -- p37

etc.

So, with all these sentences, I believe it did take the author quite sometime to compose this oeuvre. After all, it is good.

[astried]

A peek on first paragraph:

"Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement...anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation. Albert argumentatively answers at another apartment. Answers: ants are Ameisen. Ants are Ameisen?"

I want.. want.. want...

[Geoffrey Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are Boyd's Congolese detectives effectively frisking grass huts in Jubba? Kikuyo lovers moan, nervously, orgasmically penetrating quiff, rotating sensuously, twisting under vibrations, willfully, xenophobic, yearning, zippered. Zealous Yolanda, Xavier's wanton, vicious uppercut tingling, squeezes royally Queen Philomena's open, noisome mouth like kneading junket, is happy getting fucked even daily, casually, by Alfred.

[J B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish is a language game which provides beauty and ugliness, story and non-story and make for a difficult read. It makes for some difficult reading because I found and I think you may find too that your brain isn't used to the constrictions that are presented in this book. Not all of the writing in here is great either but some of it is. That's why I'm giving this a 3.5.

[Sini · Rating 4 out of 5]

De uitermate curieuze roman "Alphabetical Africa" (1974), van de vergeten Amerikaanse postmodernist Walter Abish (1931- 2022), gold als onvertaalbaar. Maar gelukkig is hij nu tweetalig uitgegeven. Ook schenkt vertaler Guido van de Wiel ons op Academia. edu twee gratis e-books: een chronologisch vertaallogboek en een thematisch vertaallogboek. Dat is heel genereus, want beide e-books bevatten veel informatie over zijn vertaalkeuzes en over inhoud en achtergronden van "Alphabetical Africa".

Met dit boek stelde Abish zichzelf en zijn vertaler voor een exceptionele uitdaging. Want het eerste hoofdstuk bestaat alleen uit woorden die met een – a beginnen. In het tweede hoofdstuk komen daar woorden bij die met een – b beginnen. In het derde hoofdstuk komen daar weer woorden bij die met een – c beginnen. Ook in de hoofdstukken erna komt er steeds een beginletter bij. Maar pas in hoofdstuk 26, het – z hoofdstuk, zijn alle beginletters mogelijk. In de 26 hoofdstukken daarna gebeurt vervolgens het omgekeerde: de beginletter -z verdwijnt, daarna de – y, daarna de -x, et cetera. En in het allerlaatste hoofdstuk zijn er alleen woorden die met een – a beginnen.

Vooral de hoofdstukken met alleen – a’s als beginletter staan vol alliteraties en ellipsen. De allereerste zin luidt bijvoorbeeld: “Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex’s angry assertion: another African amusement”. En het slot luidt: “another Alva another Alex another Allen another Alfred another Africa another alphabet”. Knap toch, hoe Abish meerdere zinnen vult met alleen – a woorden. Of met alleen – a, - b en – c woorden. Verrassend is ook dat zijn zinnen volkomen anders zijn dan de zinnen waaraan we zijn gewend, maar vaak toch klinken als een klok. Zij het een heel vreemde klok. En even verrassend is hoe leesbaar die zinnen zijn, ondanks hun zo ontregelende ongewoonheid.

Intrigerend is bovendien het effect van contractie, expansie en weer contractie. Want in de eerste hoofdstukken is het idioom zo beperkt dat het je de adem beneemt, daarna wordt het idioom stapje voor stapje steeds ruimer al blijven de zinnen elliptisch, maar dat idioom krimpt vervolgens steeds meer in. Wat versterkt wordt door de troosteloze herhaling van “another” aan het slot, en door het ontbreken van leestekens. Alsof het boek in ademloos beperkt idioom begint en in impasse eindigt. Alsof het in zijn geheel bestaat uit de geleidelijke uitbreiding en vervolgens de vernauwing van de taal. En alsof het hele verhaal niks anders is dan een eerst uitdijende en dan weer samentrekkende ontdekkingsreis in ons alfabet.

Dit huzarenstukje doet sterk denken aan Georges Perec, die een roman schreef waarin de – e ontbrak (’t Manco). En een roman waarin juist alleen de – e voorkwam en andere klinkers niet ("De wedergekeerden"). Ook die boeken zijn trouwens door Guido van de Wiel vertaald. Tijdens het schrijven van "Alphabetical Africa" kende Abish Perecs werk echter nog niet. Maar hij legde zichzelf wel vergelijkbare onmogelijke vormbeperkingen (contraintes) op. En dat deed hij juist om geheel nieuwe vormen van creativiteit aan te boren. Net als Perec. Want door dwingende regels te volgen die totaal afwijken van de normale conventies dwong hij zichzelf om niet- conventioneel te schrijven. En om nieuwe oplossingen te vinden voor ongebruikelijke problemen. Hoofdstukken met alleen de – a als beginletter schrijf je immers niet op je routine. Dat vereist heel nieuwe werkwijzen, waarin je helemaal loskomt van je vertrouwde denkpatronen. Wat proza oplevert dat nog nooit eerder is gezien. En dat door al die – a’s ook de taal lijkt van iemand die geheel opnieuw begint te spreken. Stamelend, hakkelend, zonder het houvast dat wij aan het alfabet hebben. Maar wel met een geheel nieuwe en ongerept frisse blik op de wereld.

Ook opvallend zijn de ongrijpbare vreemdheid en het elliptische karakter van plot en personages. Alex, Allen en Alva zijn volgens de verteller verwikkeld in een dubbelzinnige geschiedenis van ontvoering en juwelenroof in Antibes. De buitengewoon schone Alva is er kennelijk met de juwelen vandoor, en Alex en Allen zijn kennelijk in alle uithoeken van Afrika naar haar op zoek. Brandend van verlangen naar die juwelen. Maar misschien ook naar haar.

Van die geschiedenis worden steeds meer aspecten onthuld. Dat gebeurt echter heel geleidelijk, even geleidelijk als de uitbreiding van het idioom. Bovendien nemen ook de tegenspraken en onduidelijkheden steeds toe. Al was het maar vanwege een zin als: “Alex and Allen deny Antibes, deny everything”. Een zin die ons als elliptisch raadsel aanstaart, ook omdat hij door witregels van de andere zinnen is gescheiden. En die alles ontkent wat eerder al net zo elliptisch is gezegd. Waardoor de toch al niet geringe raadsels nog verder worden vergroot.

Te meer omdat het Afrika dat Alex en Allen doorkruisen sterk lijkt op een droom, een surrealistisch verzinsel, een projectiescherm van Westerse verzinsels en verlangens. Een droom bovendien die er heel anders uitziet in de kliktalen en de trommelsignalen van de Afrikanen dan in onze alfabetische taal. Voorts wordt elk realisme door grillige fantasie verdrongen. Zodat we kennis maken met Queen Quat, een vrouw die soms ook een man is of lijkt, en die alles in haar land fel oranje laat schilderen. Wat de kleur is die het land ook heeft op landkaarten: de kaart wordt dus het gebied. Ook lezen we over mieren die mierenbruggen bouwen, de vierde dimensie ontdekken, oorlog voeren, als arbeidskrachten optreden, en figureren als raadselachtige symbolen van alles opvretende vernietiging. Of over alligators, die in Afrika helemaal niet voorkomen. Maar die toch al in hoofdstuk 1 worden genoemd: ‘alligator’ begint immers met een – a.

Ook de verteller is een raadselachtige figuur. Nooit noemt hij zijn naam, en in de vroege hoofdstukken noemt hij zich alleen ‘author’. Niet eens “the author” want hij kan de – t niet gebruiken. Niet “I”, want hij beschikt niet over de – i. Daardoor lijkt de ik- figuur hoofdstukken lang verstoken van een ik. Of als ik-loos personage en ik- loze vertelinstantie samen te vallen met ‘author’. En zodra hij wel “I” kan zeggen, zegt hij heel vreemde dingen. Bijvoorbeeld: “My entire memory is a fleeting gaze into Alva’s face. I am afraid of loving her and have invented her lovers, her engineers, but my inventions may, for all I know, be accurate”. Dat suggereert dat hij Alex en Allen verzonnen heeft, uit door angst gefnuikte liefde voor Alva. Ook lijkt hij te suggereren dat het hele boek – de hele alfabetisch zoektocht door een verzonnen Afrika- draait om zijn vergeefse verlangen naar Alva. In zijn nawoord en e- books meldt Van de Wiel bovendien dat “Alfabetical” volgens sommige recensenten een spel is met “Alva + bed”. Zodat het verlangen naar Alva ook door zou klinken in de titel "Alphabetical Africa". En in de vele keren dat ‘author’ of ‘I’ over het alfabet spreekt.

Ook zegt de verteller: “I don’t care if Allen and Alex are in Africa, I don’t care if both are hunting for Alva, because I am. I am. And I have an accurate chart, and a dictionary and her description”. Alsof het alleen maar gaat om zijn obsessie voor Alva. Bovendien noemt de verteller niet voor niets die gebiedskaart, dat woordenboek en de “description”. Ook in veel andere zinnen. Wat suggereert dat het achterna jagen van Alva vooral in taal gebeurt, via woordenboeken of beschrijvingen, of in de fictieve ruimte van een gebiedskaart. Ook de herhaling van “I am” is significant. Van de Wiel vertaalt dat terecht met “dat (= Ava achterna jagen) doe ik immers. Dat doe ik”. Maar het betekent tegelijk ook “Ik ben”. Alsof het achterna jagen van Alva het “zijn” van de ik- figuur helemaal doordesemt. Terwijl dat “ik” en ook het verlangen van de ik-figuur voor de lezer nauwelijks vorm krijgt.

Kortom: de plot van deze roman, die toch al uit lacunes en breuken is opgetrokken, wordt in beweging gezet door een anonieme ik- verteller die zich in raadselen hult. En door diens al even ongrijpbare verlangen. Dat gebeurt zoals gezegd in een vaak volkomen elliptische taal, waarin grillige fantasie het realisme overwoekert. Alphabetical Africa ontregelt ons dus door de ongewoonheid van zijn taal, zijn plot, zijn personages en zijn vertellende en verlangende maar volkomen schimmige ik- figuur. Want het boek staat haaks op al onze conventies rondom plot, taalgebruik, personages en setting. En het stelt daardoor al onze leesverwachtingen voortdurend op de proef.

Maar precies daardoor verruimt het ook onze blik. Want onze conventies en gewoonten, die ons intrinsiek beperken in het totaal aan mogelijkheden om ons uit te drukken, worden door Abish opengebroken. Zodat we een glimp opvangen van het ongewone aan gene zijde van onze gewoonte. Of op zijn minst gestimuleerd worden voor even onze gewoonten los te laten, en met iets minder routineuze ogen na te denken over onszelf en de wereld. In zijn nawoord zegt Van de Wiel dan ook: “Dit boek ontvouwt zich […] niet volgens normale plot- of personagegedreven ontwikkelingen, maar […] verwijst naar iets groters en vreemders; iets wat, alhoewel vaag bekend, zich buiten de sfeer van oorzaak en gevolg lijkt te bevinden. Abish werkt in de traditie van Viktor Shklovsky, die in 1917 al betoogde dat kunst ten diepste bedoeld is om de dempende effecten van onze gewoonten te overwinnen door vertrouwde dingen op een onbekende manier voor te stellen”.

Ik amuseerde mij prima met dit boek. Ook de keuze om het tweetalig uit te geven juich ik toe. Want de vertaling op de rechterpagina verhelderde steeds het Engels op de linkerpagina. Terwijl de poëtische kracht en elliptische dichtheid van de Engelstalige linkerpagina weer extra inhoud gaf aan het Nederlands op de rechterpagina. Abish rekt het Engels op, Van de Wiel rekt het Nederlands op, en het is fascinerend om die twee stijloefeningen te vergelijken. Ja, de vertaling is soms stroever en wijdlopiger dan het origineel. Maar hoe kan dat ook anders. Bovendien bevat die vertaling ook veel creatieve vondsten. En passages die op een andere manier ongewoon zijn, waardoor je de ongewoonheid van Abish met andere ogen gaat bezien. Ik had kortom grote pret met Walter Abish. En zeker ook met Guido van de Wiel.

[Hal Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to judge a book this experimental: the first chapter contains only words beginning with A ("Ages ago an archaeologist...") the second chapter with A and B ("Both Alex and Allen are back again...") and so on up to Z, whereupon the letters disappear, one by one, again, and the final chapter is an A-filled catalog and parody of further adventures ("...another abuse another acceptance..."). The end result isn't really successful as a novel -- certainly few readers have ever finished the book caring about or even able to remember the distinction between Alex and Allen; but it can scarcely be chalked up as a failure. More as poetry than as narrative, the book teems with arresting images and interesting lines. "An economist actually begins a book entitled Ants As Consumers." There are plenty of good running gags, such as one in which countries paint their land to match their color on a map; Evelyn, the Ethiopian copy-editor who knows English, censors parts of the book with "(deleted)" -- because they are salacious? or because they contain letters after E?; the part about a letter thief stealing letters (as in epistles) is especially funny in context. "Pygmies are a good example of how everything is shrinking."

And most importantly, Abish achieves something unique: the sure knowledge that letters will become forbidden creates suspense unachievable in a conventional novel. A major character (introduced in the first Q chapter) is named Queen Quat. As the letters count down to Q in the second half of the book, her fate becomes precarious. Surely she's going to get killed off before the end of the second Q chapter? I mention this one because Abish pulls it off in a way that surprised me, but the same tension occurs again and again. What will happen to the villas and the jewels and the French consul? To Jacqueline? To the authorial I?

The book is playful enough to be fun, but it never stops screaming its serious intent. You know it's designed to be followed by an essay question: Is it an explosion of or an indulgence in colonialist narrative motifs? My questions: Is Allen a play on Allan Quatermain? And most importantly, are the two appearances of the forbidden word "or" in the first H chapter a blunder or a deeper clue, and just part of the game?

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Walter Abish is not, and has never been, a member of Oulipo, yet he made his debut as a novelist with this Oulipo-like work. At first I admired his experimental prose. Writing a chapter only using A-words is not easy by any means, and much less so when you try to write some reasonably interesting story under such a constraint. But after a while several shortcomings raise their ugly heads: First of all, there isn't much of a constraint after the chapter H -- as soon as he is allowed to use the word "I", the exotic bondage of alphabetical constraints mostly disappear. Second, I agree that the plot is occasionally amusing, but wouldn't say it is particularly engaging or inventive, and IMO using the Swahili dictionary in the way that it is used in the story is more of a cheap trick.

What I feel about most works of constrained writing is that the author focuses purely on the technique itself that the entire work becomes a mere demonstration of that technique.The constraints ideally should serve a nobler purpose, that is to expand the horizon of the literary universe. Easier said than done, I know; perhaps that is why I've yet to come across a true masterpiece of constrained writing.

P.S. Don Webb makes a homage to this work in the short story "After Abish" included in his A Spell for the Fulfillment of Desire. It is written entirely using A-words only, with an absurdist sci-fi bent.

[Rolland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dreamt of this book last night, though I didn't dream of the plot. I dreamt of the structure. I found myself composing sentences in my sleep, and each word in the sentences began with an A, B, or a C.

In "Alphabetical Africa", each word in Chapter 1 begins with the letter A. In Chapter 2, every word begins with an A or a B. The vocabulary is expanded, letter by letter and chapter by chapter, through Z. Then, the process reverses, and the book works its way back through the alphabet, letter by letter and chapter by chapter, from Z back to A. During the whole novel, we see the vocabulary and sentence structure moving from very restrained and artificial to more natural, and then back to the restricted formula of the first chapters.

What struck me was how quickly, as the book opened up to using a wider vocabulary, the language felt natural. Really, by chapter E, the story didn't feel especially constrained. However, on the way backwards through the alphabet, I very quickly noticed the restricted vocabulary. Maybe it's like quick changes in the weather. Fifty degrees in the winter feels remarkably warm (at least where I spend my winters), but the same temperature in the summer would be uncomfortably cold.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was fantastic. It's exactly the kind of book I like to read: there's a formal conceit and the author has to still make sense. Great use of (necessary, at times) alliteration, the language is poetic, it's surprisingly dense at ~160 pages. Whoever owned it before me had some meaningful passages highlighted, so there's more going on in the book than a simple formal exercise. I loved it.

(Do writers hate it when other writers do formal tricks and exercises like this? Do they find it masturbatory and/or think it's a lot of empty posturing? I only ask because it seems books like this aren't very popular and I've had to dig around to find them. It's too bad.)

[Gianluca Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah, it's a pretty good satire of Western involvement in African Affairs and the selfishness/unknowability of people in general. But it is also deeply funny and has a deft application of irony. Considering the exploration of the limits of language, the structure was rather apt and drew one's attention to the artifice of the text but also, the idea of that which lay outside the perspectives of our characters.

[Almeta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thesaurial splendor. (I know, I know, but your thesaurus is probably old!)

Although this was very clever, and surprisingly easily read once you add some B and C words, the tale was not the thing.

I’ve told everyone I know about the gag, but not about the storyline.

[MJ Nicholls]

Found in Steven Moore’s The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600.

[Jonny · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a big fan of "experimental" novels, I thought I would enjoy this more. It's an incredibly interesting concept, but doesn't really seem to come together as a novel. Unfortunate.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suspect this guy is Abish's son :D

stylistically weird and entertaining- winning combo!

[Ben Mcfarlane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Calling this word experiment a novel seems a bit dishonest to me.

[Unpil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read up to the second "Z"-chapter (the 27th), which is roughly halfway through the book.

The reason I picked up this book was the interesting structure behind it. The first chapter has only words starting with "A," the second chapter has only words starting with "A" or "B," and so on until you reach the 26th chapter, where the author is allowed to use all possible words. (Although, he does capitalize on the words starting with "Z.") Starting from the 27th chapter, however, you lose an alphabet as you advance through each chapter. In the final chapter, you are again only left with words starting with "A."

As you gain each letter, new characters and places appear in the novel. That also means that as you lose each letter, those characters and places will disappear. Once words starting with "S" are permitted, there are frequent mentions of the "shrinkage of Africa." Such shrinkage starts with Zanzibar and Zaire at the 27th chapter; indeed, Alva cuts those places off from her map of Africa.

You can feel the author's frustration with the constraint as you read the novel. "I" does not appear until the ninth; "the," until the 20th; "we," until the 23rd. Indeed, when Abish is allowed to use those words, he uses it in copious amount, as if he was saving those words while he wasn't allowed to use them.

There is a lot of alliteration throughout the novel, which has to happen at the early and late parts of the book. At some point, the novel even uses sentences that mimic the abecedarian structure of the novel:

All black scholars dream about her [Alva]. Have fantasies about her, about her doorbell, her magnificent breasts, her base and border, her bed and belt, her bronze jewels and candelabrum, her ceiling ornamentation and chest, her dress and earrings, her embroidery and façade, her fan and footstool, her fountain and furniture, her girdle and gold brocade gloves, her incense box and jewel case, her key and knocker, her mirror frame and molding, her necklace and piano, her pierced openings and processional crucifix, her quiver and sewing machine.

(Guess which chapter this is from! Hint: What letter does the final (compound) word start with?)

Having said interesting aspects of the book's structure, I have to confess what I believe is the book's major drawback: the structure and the plot don't meld very well. The plot is often digressive and uninteresting. I read up to the halfway of the book, and I still haven't developed an attachment to any of the characters - even Alex, Allen, and Alva. Also, once you pass the "I"-chapter, the sentences sound normal, especially because you can use words like "is" and "it." Therefore, I would only recommend this book to those who are interested in Oulipo writings. If you want to enjoy the humor too, however, I would suggest reading Queneau's Exercices de style.

P.S. There are few places where Abish cheats and use forbidden words - even one in the "W"-chapter! (I found 3 places up to the 27th chapter.) Given that those forbidden words can be rephrased using only words allowed in their chapters, I believe Abish has intentionally done this as a small joke and to keep us alert.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 5 out of 5]

A plot summary must follow a description of the structure: the opening chapter uses only words beginning with "A", the next words beginning with "A" and "B", and so on, until the twenty-sixth chapter uses all the letters. The next chapter removes "Z", the one after removes "Y", and so on, until returning to "A".

The absurd lipogrammatical limitations, slowly relaxed and then returned, dominate the content of the book, as if to centre the limitations of language and the impossibility of true representation of reality. Even as the writing becomes progressively unconstrained the stilted, cryptic style remains, full of alliteration and joyously weird tangents.

OK: the story, as far as one can tell, begins in Antibes, with some appropriately A-named characters (Alex, Allen and Alva) about to arrive in an oneiric Africa antagonised by an ant army. There is some kind of glamorous jewellery heist/murder/conspiracy, and a pursuit. Africa is portrayed as simultaneously wild, violent and sensuous (one motif is the constant beating of drums to convey information) yet also thoroughly German, in its Weltschmerz and in bursts of actual German, even whole sentences. (Abish, a Viennese Jew, fled the Nazis to Shanghai, and spent nine years in the nascent State of Israel before emigrating to the US; so Africa was the only major continent with which the cosmopolitan author of How German It Is had no personal connection.)

Reality is unstable throughout, like geography; like, of course, the language itself. Africa is shrinking, the whole continent literally collapsing and contracting. A mad queen insists on painting the entire country orange, to match the colour it is on the map. The ants invade, spreading havoc. The phrase "at least fifteen click languages". The queen is actually a king, cross-dressed? The vixen Alva begins a torrid affair with the wife of the French consul in Zanzibar, as Tanzania invades over a bridge made of people. Reality is unstable, warping and shifting.

The author appears in the first person with the onset of the letter "I", and becomes scarcer with its departure, though he finds ways to stick around. He goes to an auction to buy letters - someone has been stealing letters, and he wants to buy them back - which turn out to be the kind that you send with a stamp. His father was an inventor, who believed in devices to make life simple and clean and easy. The devices in this book solve the problems of life by eliding them, replacing the tyranny of fate with that of the omniscient author, who has cast off the traditional requirements of literature - consistency, coherence, imitation of reality - and taken on much trickier ones. Like many of its fellow Oulipian works, it may not stand as great literature, but it is a brilliantly coloured lighthouse illuminating the vast wasteland of mediocrity.

[Imre Bertelsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alfabetisch Afrika is een boek met een heel bijzondere vorm en alleen daarom al de moeite van het lezen waard, maar ik respecteer het meer dan dat ik er echt van genoten heb. Als lezer moet je de eerste paar hoofdstukken behoorlijk je best doen om het overzicht te behouden tussen alle a's, b's en c's die je om de oren vliegen en dat de woorden met maar heel weinig letters beginnen. Het plot is duidelijk, een juwelenroof en de jacht op de geheimzinnige femme fatale Alva. Dat plot mag dan nog enigszins conventioneel klinken, het komt nooit echt op gang en dat is precies wat Walter Abish wilde.

Hij maakt namelijk een taalspel waarin zowel het plot als de setting heel duidelijk het middel zijn en niet het doel, dat is het taalspel zelf. Ik vind het bewonderenswaardig hoe schrijvers tot dit soort creatieve uitingen komen en het zichzelf daarbij moeilijk maken. Daarbij komt wel dat het boek zelf nog steeds leesbaar moet zijn en daar begon het gaandeweg een beetje te wringen voor mij.

De zinnen zijn vaak hele achtbaanritten op zich en vaak is dat vermakelijk, maar na een tijdje heb je dat wel gezien en word je er maar duizelig van. Ik vond dat Abish af en toe heel sterk uit de hoek kwam met mooie haast filosofische zinnen. Ook wordt er continu gespeeld met de vooroordelen en opvattingen die wij vaak over Afrika hebben (Abish zelf was er ook nog nooit geweest), vooral in deze passages komt veel humor kijken. Ook de tweetalige uitgave is een slimme keuze, want het leukste van dit boek is het vergelijken van de originele tekst met de uitstekende vertaling van Guido van der Wiel. Die moest zich vaak in bochten wringen om zich toch nog aan de regels van het boek te houden en keer op keer lukt dat, zonder dat het geforceerd aanvoelt.

Toen het boek weer begon af te tellen en de beginletters van de woorden afnamen begon mijn interesse langzaamaan ook af te nemen. De koppeling tussen het verdwijnen van de letters en de amnesie van de hoofdpersonen is mooi gevonden, maar toch voelde het teveel alsof de roman geen vaste basis meer had. Terwijl er plottechnisch genoeg had kunnen gebeuren, laat de schrijver het boek heel associatief blijven en springt hij van hot naar her, gewoon de zin kiezend die hij op dat moment wil schrijven. Het taalspel blijft en er blijft ook in het tweede deel nog genoeg te genieten, maar toch ben ik niet helemaal overtuigd. Vier sterren voor de vertaling, drie voor het origineel.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I heard about this book a few years ago and was intrigued by the constraints Abish put on himself while writing: using only words that start with A in the first chapter, then A and B in the second, then A, B, and C in the third, until he get to Z and then to remove letters one chapter at a time, leaving the last chapter with only words that begin with A. It's a rather amazing feat to attempt and when I found the first word that didn't fit the pattern, I was crushed. Never have I been disappointed to see the word "in." It's so innocuous a preposition that you don't even think about using it, but that innocuousness makes the challenge all the greater: he wasn't able to us "the" for 2/3 of the book! Once I found one mistake I tracked another 23 (mostly prepositions, why his editor didn't catch them or tell him is beyond me) over the course of the 152 pages, which is still astounding.

I'm not entirely sure what the story was about, except that it was some rather undefined travels through an unrealistic Africa. Characters kept appearing and then disappearing and I wasn't ever sure if the "ants" were a metaphor for soldiers or not. As letters were added to the alphabet the story became clearer, but never to an extent that I was intrigued by it. What kept me going was to see how well Abish dealt with the challenge, which I think he did admirably well.

PopSugar Reading Challenge 2017 | Advanced Task 46: Book from a genre/subgenre that you've never heard of (in this case "oulipo" https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/jul/12/oulipo-freeing-literature-tightening-rules

[Joel Gallant · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an experiment in “constrained writing," with 52 chapters beginning with A through Z and then returning sequentially to A. In the first chapter, every word must begin with A (“Ages ago, Alex, Allen, and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex’s admonition, against Allen’s angry assertion: another African amusement.”) In chapter 2 he can use A and B words, and so on until the first and second Z chapters, when he is briefly unconstrained. The constraints resume and accumulate as he returns to the final A chapter.

As an experiment it’s a tour de force, but the constraints constrain what passes for a plot. As for Africa, it’s essentially an imaginary place, perhaps chosen because all the Z’s are convenient. In fact, much of the story takes place in Zanzibar, though that island can only be named in chapters 26 and 27. The book is written in the first person, though for obvious reasons, that’s only apparent in chapters 9-43. This is a book for the intensely curious.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Constrained writing is a gimmick! they say.

If I were to argue in favor of said approach, I'd say that sometimes new rhythms and patterns and structures can emerge, and isn't that point of exploring fiction in the first place?

The neatest thing going on here is that in the early chapters, you, the reader, are very aware of the constraints. But midway through the book, as he gets access to more and more letters, you stop paying attention to the constraints and just ride the odd, jagged, somewhat comical prose. And then when the letters start to delete themselves again, it's almost imperceptible. You're used to the rhythms. It's a trick. He's a weird prose stylist all along, regardless of which letters he can and cannot use.

Touché. You seem like a cool guy, Walter.

[Ted · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a bit surprised by how many good reviews are of this book. Perhaps I'm just missing something about it. But as an experiment in constrained writing, it's not that challenging. The first chapter includes only words beginning with "A". The second, with "A" and "B". And so on. The 26th chapter uses all the letters. And then the process reverses, going from "Z" back to "A". What this means is, it's really only the chapters at the beginning and end which are seriously constrained. And those chapters, in my opinion, aren't impressive. The middle chapters, which have little constraint, aren't that interesting.