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99: The New Meaning
The five stories that make up 99: THE NEW MEANING are created entirely from fragments of other works. From Abish's These works were undertaken in a playful spirit--not actually 'written' but orchestrated. The fragmented narrative can be said to function as a kind of lure--given the constraints, anything else would be beyond its scope. In using selected segments of published texts authored by others as the exclusive 'ready made' material for these five 'explorations,' I wanted to probe certain familiar emotional configurations afresh, and arrive at an emotional content that is not mine by design. Includes photos by Cecile Abish.
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
About the author
Walter Abish
24 books44 followersWalter 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 1, 2019
In the Art Institute of Chicago there is a piece by Marcel Duchamp named
Bottle Rack
. It is categorized as a "found object" because it is not an original sculpture, it is an actual bottle rack used for storing wine bottles that Duchamp bought, signed, and put on display. Here is an article raving about Chicago's acquisition of this piece. Here is another one explaining that Duchamp bought the bottle rack for $3 in 1959 and recent auctioneers have valued it at approximately $12 million.
I hate Bottle Rack.
I hate that it exists, I hate that it is considered art, I hate that it is on display in a fantastic art gallery, I hate that Chicago probably paid through the nose to get it.
I understand Bottle Rack (I think, as much as any layperson might understand an art installation). Duchamp wanted to make a point: what is art, really? Who gets to decide what art is? Does something become art just because we put it in a gallery? According to critics, this is a groundbreaking and unconventional statement that turned the whole art world on its ear. But is it a statement that really needed to be made, that is enhanced by the actual entry of that theoretical piece into a real-world gallery?
Did I mention that the current Bottle Rack installation is not even the original piece? Because Duchamp's sister threw out the original Bottle Rack thinking it was just a bottle rack (which, remember, it actually was) and so Duchamp went and bought another bottle rack and then displayed it as Bottle Rack and everybody just went along with it.
Lord, I hate Bottle Rack. It makes my blood boil just writing about it. And I feel similarly about 99: The New Meaning.
Abish did not write new material for this book. He collected sentences from existing works, strung them together to form a new narrative, one that does make sense and focuses mostly on themes of identity. Abish notes in his introduction, "I wanted to probe certain familiar emotional configurations afresh, and arrive at an emotional content that is not mine by design." This book raises all sorts of questions and serves to challenge our conception of literature, similarly to Bottle Rack. Are you a writer if you don't actually write original content? Who defines the meaning of a work, its author or its audience? Can meaning translate from one work into another, can ideas be stitched together to form something new, and does that "count" as "art" or is it something else? Is this a new composition or a compilation of other works, a "greatest hits" reel highlighting similar topics from other works or a new, single cohesive piece?
2 stars out of 5. I am angry that I read this. Surely all sorts of interesting discussion will be prompted by this sort of "found poetry" approach, and I feel that as a thought experiment this would be fertile ground for debate but to actually go and print it (and to receive a grant from a Rhode Island foundation to do so) makes it real, and that makes me angry. Like the cliched dismissal of an abstract painting, "My 5-year-old kid could paint that!" anybody could do what Abish did. So now I'm "triggered" (in the parlance of our times) and admittedly there is a certain artistic merit to that. I've long maintained that great literature is best measured by how it moves and challenges us, emotionally, how it makes us feel something we might not otherwise have felt or explored. In that sense, 99 is extremely successful.
But that doesn't mean I like it.
I hate Bottle Rack.
I hate that it exists, I hate that it is considered art, I hate that it is on display in a fantastic art gallery, I hate that Chicago probably paid through the nose to get it.
I understand Bottle Rack (I think, as much as any layperson might understand an art installation). Duchamp wanted to make a point: what is art, really? Who gets to decide what art is? Does something become art just because we put it in a gallery? According to critics, this is a groundbreaking and unconventional statement that turned the whole art world on its ear. But is it a statement that really needed to be made, that is enhanced by the actual entry of that theoretical piece into a real-world gallery?
Did I mention that the current Bottle Rack installation is not even the original piece? Because Duchamp's sister threw out the original Bottle Rack thinking it was just a bottle rack (which, remember, it actually was) and so Duchamp went and bought another bottle rack and then displayed it as Bottle Rack and everybody just went along with it.
Lord, I hate Bottle Rack. It makes my blood boil just writing about it. And I feel similarly about 99: The New Meaning.
Abish did not write new material for this book. He collected sentences from existing works, strung them together to form a new narrative, one that does make sense and focuses mostly on themes of identity. Abish notes in his introduction, "I wanted to probe certain familiar emotional configurations afresh, and arrive at an emotional content that is not mine by design." This book raises all sorts of questions and serves to challenge our conception of literature, similarly to Bottle Rack. Are you a writer if you don't actually write original content? Who defines the meaning of a work, its author or its audience? Can meaning translate from one work into another, can ideas be stitched together to form something new, and does that "count" as "art" or is it something else? Is this a new composition or a compilation of other works, a "greatest hits" reel highlighting similar topics from other works or a new, single cohesive piece?
2 stars out of 5. I am angry that I read this. Surely all sorts of interesting discussion will be prompted by this sort of "found poetry" approach, and I feel that as a thought experiment this would be fertile ground for debate but to actually go and print it (and to receive a grant from a Rhode Island foundation to do so) makes it real, and that makes me angry. Like the cliched dismissal of an abstract painting, "My 5-year-old kid could paint that!" anybody could do what Abish did. So now I'm "triggered" (in the parlance of our times) and admittedly there is a certain artistic merit to that. I've long maintained that great literature is best measured by how it moves and challenges us, emotionally, how it makes us feel something we might not otherwise have felt or explored. In that sense, 99 is extremely successful.
But that doesn't mean I like it.
October 5, 2014
This is a quirky collection of, well, not exactly poetry in and of itself, though the way it is compiled can be considered "poetic."
99:The New Meaning is actually a collection of sentences and paragraphs by writers other than the author, Walter Abish. As Abish explains: "These works were undertaken in a playful spirit - not actually "written" but orchestrated ... In using selected segments of published texts authored by others as the exclusive "ready made" material for these five "explorations," I wanted to probe certain familiar emotional configurations afresh, and arrive at an emotional content that is not mine by design."
The book is composed of five parts, and, as Abish explains further: "The titlepiece, "99:The New Meaning," consisting of no less than 99 segments by as many authors, each line or sentence or paragraph appropriated from a page bearing that same, to me, mystically significant number 99." The other four parts are also compiled from self-portraits, journals, diaries, collected letters and travel notes of other authors.
Fascinating - yes. Meaningful - not sure. Since I like haiku, short poetic forms and experimental poetry, I enjoyed reading these "snippets" from Kafka, Flaubert and other 18th, 19th and 20th century writers. I think the only way to provide a sense of what this book is like is to transcribe the first page of the final and titlepiece chapter, "99: The New Meaning":
59
It was an exquisite January morning in which there was no threat of rain, but a grey sky making the calmest background for the charms of a mild winter scene: - the grassy borders of the lanes, the hedgerows sprinkled with red berries and haunted with low twitterings, the purple bareness of the elms, the rich brown of the furrows.
15
The longing began in his speechless genitals, for which his brain cells acted as interpreter.
16
Who is it then?
No one, she said. I just don't know why I am alive.
13
Things aren't so jolly easy, said Philip, more to himself than to her.
99:The New Meaning is actually a collection of sentences and paragraphs by writers other than the author, Walter Abish. As Abish explains: "These works were undertaken in a playful spirit - not actually "written" but orchestrated ... In using selected segments of published texts authored by others as the exclusive "ready made" material for these five "explorations," I wanted to probe certain familiar emotional configurations afresh, and arrive at an emotional content that is not mine by design."
The book is composed of five parts, and, as Abish explains further: "The titlepiece, "99:The New Meaning," consisting of no less than 99 segments by as many authors, each line or sentence or paragraph appropriated from a page bearing that same, to me, mystically significant number 99." The other four parts are also compiled from self-portraits, journals, diaries, collected letters and travel notes of other authors.
Fascinating - yes. Meaningful - not sure. Since I like haiku, short poetic forms and experimental poetry, I enjoyed reading these "snippets" from Kafka, Flaubert and other 18th, 19th and 20th century writers. I think the only way to provide a sense of what this book is like is to transcribe the first page of the final and titlepiece chapter, "99: The New Meaning":
59
It was an exquisite January morning in which there was no threat of rain, but a grey sky making the calmest background for the charms of a mild winter scene: - the grassy borders of the lanes, the hedgerows sprinkled with red berries and haunted with low twitterings, the purple bareness of the elms, the rich brown of the furrows.
15
The longing began in his speechless genitals, for which his brain cells acted as interpreter.
16
Who is it then?
No one, she said. I just don't know why I am alive.
13
Things aren't so jolly easy, said Philip, more to himself than to her.
January 4, 2008
This isn't poetry...I don't know what it is. It IS amazing the Waldrops didn't get popped for serious copyright infringement, because from what I can tell, it is completely constructed of lifted passages from other books. Mainly Flaubert & Kafka.
3 stars for method.
The self-portrait section was my favorite. And the b&w photos by Abish's father.
And the title.
But it all felt like smoke & mirrors. Toward the end I got bored. There wasn't really any "new meaning" it was just a cool title.
3 stars for method.
The self-portrait section was my favorite. And the b&w photos by Abish's father.
And the title.
But it all felt like smoke & mirrors. Toward the end I got bored. There wasn't really any "new meaning" it was just a cool title.
March 24, 2009
yeah yeah. i get it. undermines romantic notions of authority, etc, etc. makes the reader create her own meanings, yadda ya. challenges traditional narrative constructions, blah blah blah.
i know all this, and on some level can appreciate it.
but really?
BOOOOOORRRING.
i know all this, and on some level can appreciate it.
but really?
BOOOOOORRRING.
Read
October 3, 2013Really enjoying this. Would love to find a list of each of the source texts.
December 16, 2013
I can't say I truly know what Abish accomplished here. I can say, considering my designs on writing, that I think I have a reasonably good idea of his intentions. And, I can say it blew my mind! Sheesh! What happened to this guy? Why not more attention on his achievements?
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews