Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Abish, Walter - John Updike

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JOHN UPDIKE

Walter Abish's [Alphabetical Africa is a] remarkable, ludicrously programmatic novel…. The adventure Mr. Abish has set himself is to compose a novel of twice twenty-six chapters, of which the first employs only words beginning with "A," the second words beginning with "A" and "B," and so on up to "Z," by which time the full lexical possibilities of the English language are available; then, from "Z" to "A," he moves back down the alphabet, subtracting letters one by one until the last chapter, like the first, is composed entirely of words beginning with "A." The hardships of such a journey should not be underestimated; "A" brings with it a handy number of articles and connectives, but not until "H" is reached can the pronoun "he" and the helper verb "have" be used, and for all but the fourteen chapters between "T" and "T" such virtually indispensable formations as "the," "to," "they," "their," and "this" must be dispensed with. A character called...

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1. Introduction
2. Richard Howard
3. John Updike
4. Daniel Levinson
5. Anatole Broyard
6. Kenneth Baker
7. Irving Malin
8. Tony Tanner
9. Paul West
10. Betty Falkenberg
11. James Knowlton
12. Jerome Klinkowitz
13. George Kearns
14. Copyright

1. John Updike