SOURCE: “On the Subject of Walter Abish and Kathy Acker,” in Literature and Psychology, Vol. XXXIII, Nos. 3 & 4, 1987, pp. 38–57.

In the following excerpt, Siegle examines how Abish uses language to undermine subjectivity, which, Abish argues, encourages the projection of presumed meaning onto ready surfaces, and prevents the discovery of the actuality of things in themselves.

Part of the attraction of Walter Abish's work is the extent to which it carries forward the rethinking of subjectivity, rescuing many immediate experiences we know to be part of the contemporary subjective reality instead of dispersing them along with the theory of selfhood that had supported their fictional manifestations. He tells Jerome Klinkowitz in an interview that “I avoid the intentional and sometimes unintentional hierarchy of values that seems to creep in whenever lifelike incidents are depicted,” and goes on to explain that

language ceases to be a “tool” that facilitates the realization...