In I Am A Resident of An Ivory Tower Peter Handke discusses the relationship of literary fiction to the reality it explores and creates. Literary reality, as Handke sees, it, is not the reality of objects, of things, but rather the reality of words, of language…. Cognition must be mediated through the vehicle of language. But language is at the same time a social institution in which the cultural history of its speakers is deeply imbedded. The word 'tree' signifies an object occurring in nature; but at the same time it evokes a whole series of emotional responses related to the historically determined value of that object in our culture. Thus the artist as writer is constantly confronted with the dilemma of having to form a medium which already contains a pre-conceived notion of reality.

I believe that Walter Abish shares a similarly skeptical view of fiction as language, and that this skepticism is the key to his latest novel, How German Is It….

Abish's unsettling portrait of the New Germany at once confronts the reader with the cold and crystalline topography of a world populated with people and things but devoid of the familiar signposts which guide, direct and comfort. Abish's language merely points at the world, signifies objects and situations, without providing the hierarchy of comparisons and value judgements into which we are accustomed to relating unfamiliar information…. The result is an eerie sense of uncertainty, of being on the verge of recognition without being able to take the final step….

Abish supplies only fragments of actions and situations, never explanations. The reader is left with the frustrating feeling of a person trying to complete a puzzle in which key pieces are missing…. The significance of the novel apparently doesn't lie in what is being narrated, but rather in how it is narrated. The key to the book, I believe, lies in its very mystery, its uncertainty, its unfamiliarity. Abish avoids clearly defined actions and explanations. The narrated world stands for itself, signifies itself. It is truly a world without verisimilitude. If there is to be meaning, it must be supplied by the reader. Nothing can be taken for granted….

In How German Is It Abish has ingeniously moulded narrative technique and narrated reality into a unity which effectively achieves the novel's intent: to break through the monotonous humdrum of everyday existence and thus open up a new mode of seeing. Abish realizes his intention in a twofold fashion: first, he shows a society which has passively succumbed to the lure of harmony and equilibrium as intrinsic values. Secondly, Abish's narrative technique creates in the reader a sense of uncertainty, it defamiliarizes the world so that it can be seen and re-COGNIZED anew.

How German Is It is a literary tour de force, one of those rare novels that manage to combine philosophical perspective with readability. Abish's sociology of the New Germany is haunted with a number of flaws, flaws which, so it would seem, stem from an unfortunate mixture of Austrian (Abish is a born Austrian) and American prejudices against Germany. Nonetheless: a brilliant and thoroughly successful novel, a pleasure for the serious reader.