''Alphabetical Africa'' is a

constrained writing Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern. Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form. D ...

experiment by

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. ...

. It is written in the form of a

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

. Writing in ''

Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentlema ...

'',

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...

put it on a list of 20th century novels that will endure. A paperback edition was issued in New York by

New Directions Publishing New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin and incorporated in 1964. Its offices are located at 80 Eighth Avenue in New York City. History New Directions was born in 193 ...

in 1974 with . It was still in print in 2004.

The Constraint

The writing is restricted by a pseudo-

alliterative Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...

rule: the first chapter contains only words starting with the letter ''a'', the second chapter only words starting with ''a'' or ''b'', etc.; each subsequent chapter adds the next letter in the alphabet to the set of allowed word beginnings. This continues for the first 25 chapters, until at last Abish is (briefly) allowed to write without constraint. In the second half of the book, through chapter 52, letters are removed in the reverse order that they were added. Thus, ''z'' words disappear in chapter 27, ''y'' in chapter 28, etc...

Errors

Readers have noted that there are several places in the narrative where the constraint is violated. Most counts of these violations number them between four and six; however, up to 43 have been noted by astute readers. One point of dispute is whether the failures to meet the constraint are intentional, and therefore potentially meaningful, or are simply editing mistakes. It is said that when Abish was notified of the errors, he reacted with total surprise. Two of the errors were "I"'s found later in the book, situated next to the margins, most likely overlooked during editing. Similar mistakes of spelling and grammar occur in other Abish works, such as ''

How German Is It ''How German Is It (Wie Deutsch ist es)'' is a novel by Walter Abish, published in 1980. It received PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1981. It is most often classified as a postmodern work of fiction. The novel revolves around the Hargenau brothe ...

'' (1980), where exact presentation is clearly a priority, and thus the mistakes come across as intentional.

References

External links

* 1974 American novels Constrained writing {{1970s-novel-stub