Alphabetical Africa (New Directions Books)

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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. It takes the child on an African safari of sorts, bringing animals alive in the text and illustrations, especially animals that are new or unfamiliar to the child/reader.

Updated] See now also Stephen Saperstein Frug's more thorough list of errata at his Attempts weblog. Discussion of how to harmonize these with other systems led to several largely abortive proposals such as the African Reference Alphabet and the World Orthography. Easier said than done, I know; perhaps that is why I've yet to come across a true masterpiece of constrained writing. 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.At least it is meant to be, but all sorts of other things come up as well (while Alva proves particularly difficult to pin down).

He also takes words from African dictionaries, listing them -- but this too provides little additional insight. I measure my deliberate advance into Africa", he says -- forced by his limited vocabulary to advance very deliberately. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure. 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. I found myself composing sentences in my sleep, and each word in the sentences began with an A, B, or a C.The fact that most of them are inspired by aspects of the contemporary historical reality, as sometimes chronicled in the press, is sufficient to put them beyond the pale of literary creation. 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. I believe most people familiar with the Oulipo group are familiar with this book (Abish's first novel) and it's structure/limitation. Wer den deutschen und den englischen Text nebeneinander liest, wird vielleicht so manches Mal irritiert sein, aber sehr viel öfter sein Vergnügen haben an dem Spannungsfeld, das dieses wichtige (und vom Verlag vorbildlich gestaltete) Buch der amerikanischen Postmoderne und seine eigenwillige deutsche Version erzeugen. The project also attracted the support of UNESCO, given not only the release date on International Mother Language Day, but also the film's pertinent subject matter and the unique and free multi-lingual distribution strategy.

g., "Ages ago an archeologist, Albert, alias Arthur, ably attended an archaic Afrcian armchair affair at Antibes. 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. Good lines: "But even invented countries follow a common need, as each country heads for a common memory, a common destiny, a common materiality. 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). Photo by Michael Wolf Franz aims to fly in Concentration City (it was a dream he had) but there's really no room to fly in a city that has no open air space -- not even for a single bird.It uses the ‘;’, semicolon to resolve a problem and gets us away from having to use 3, ), c, when we could easily type ɛ, ɔ, ŋ. But that does not happen often, or consistently, and sometimes it seems not to happen intentionally. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). Incoming infinitely, ephemeral as they are, Austin's waves foreshadow and harbor clues in Nakamura Reality's epic prologue. As letters were added to the alphabet the story became clearer, but never to an extent that I was intrigued by it.

Note that the two last mistakes are marginal one -- in the sense that the I's hug the margin and maybe don't stand out. pushing fiction beyond heretofore preconceived limits to lofty new horizons in literature; of such visionary grandeur and excellence, blah blah blah," or some other blurbish bullshit like that denoting next to nothing; when in fact all the book has "accomplished" is come up with some cutesy, minutely original contrivance or gimmick to coverup the fact of its fated (and deserved) remainder-pile-mediocrity, the sole foci of its promoters having been its supposed "innovaton" because solid, compelling storytelling and writing, it completely lacks.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. There is a lot of alliteration throughout the novel, which has to happen at the early and late parts of the book.