Abish, Walter | Jerry A. Varsava (essay date 1990)
Jerry A. Varsava (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: “Walter Abish and the Topographies of Desire,” in Contingent Meanings: Postmodern Fiction, Mimesis, and the Reader, Florida State University Press, 1990, pp. 82–108.
[In the following essay, Varsava argues that a major theme in Abish's fiction is the tension between a superficial perfection and a profound moral and emotional void.]
Viennese Jews, Walter Abish and his family fled Hitler's Austria for China. Unbeknown to him, there lurked below Vienna's surface decorum, concealed by the refinement and prosperity of a former imperial center, a most virulent ethno-racial hate. And how did such a world appear to a boy of seven or eight? Life, Abish tells us, was very much an affair of surfaces for him, a mistaking of the apparent for the real. Reassured by the props of his childhood—favorite toys, a comfortable home, a supportive family—Abish viewed life as a harmonious...
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