Walter Abish

Walter Abish (December 24, 1931 – May 28, 2022) was an Austrian-born American author of experimental novels and short stories. He was conferred the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1981 and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship six years later.

Early life Abish was born in Vienna on December 24, 1931. His family was Jewish. His father, Adolph, worked as a perfumer; his mother was Friedl (Rubin).

When he was seven, he fled with his family from the Nazis, traveling first to Italy and Nice. They settled in Shanghai in 1940, a city with numerous European Jewish refugees, where they lived until 1949.

In 1949, the family relocated to Israel, where Abish served in the army and developed an interest in writing. He settled in the United States in 1957 and became an American citizen three years later. The book, whose first and last chapters employ only words starting with the letter "A", was characterized by Richard Howard in The New York Times Book Review as "something more than a stunt, though a stunt it is."

This was followed by his first collection of stories, Minds Meet, a year later, with one story envisaging Marcel Proust in Albuquerque. His second collection, In the Future Perfect, was released in 1977 and juxtaposed words in unusual patterns to form alphanumeric games.

Abish was conferred a literature fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1979.

He published a second novel, How German Is It, the following year. Recognized as his most celebrated work, it garnered him the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1981.

He also received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1981) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1987). He served on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.

Abish's third collection, 99: the New Meaning, was released in 1990 as a "limited edition of five collagist stories".

Abish worked and taught at Empire State College, Wheaton College, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Columbia University, Brown University, Yale University, and Cooper Union.

Personal life Abish married Cecile Gelb, a photographer and sculptor, in 1953. They remained married until his death. They did not have children. Alphabetical Africa 1974 – Rose Isabel Williams Foundation grant 1979 – Fellow of National Endowment for the Arts 1981 – Guggenheim fellowship 1981 – CAPS grant 1981 – PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction 1985 – Fellow of National Endowment for the Arts How German Is It 1987 – MacArthur Fellows Program