by Walter Abish
First published 1990
Walter Abish dismantles published texts and rebuilds them into something new. He takes segments from other writers' works and arranges them like musical compositions. Each of the five stories emerges from this process of literary archaeology. The fragments create their own narrative pull, drawing readers through unfamiliar emotional territory. Abish probes feelings and situations that belong to other authors, yet the final emotional content becomes something different entirely. The constraints of working only with existing material shape every choice. What results are explorations that feel both familiar and strange. The book includes photographs by Cecile Abish that complement these textual experiments.
Genres: literary-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: fragmented-storytelling, unconventional-narrative
Paperback · Burning Deck