SOURCE: “Walter Abish and the Questioning of the Reader,” in Facing Texts: Encounters between Contemporary Writers and Critics, edited by Heide Ziegler, Duke University Press, 1988, pp. 168–85.

In the following essay, Butler argues that although Abish's fiction challenges the idea that there can be an authoritative, self-centered narrative, it does not surrender a quest for meaning or for representing a reality beyond the text itself.

The title How German Is It calls attention to a preoccupation, in this case Germany. It's a highly charged issue. Most of us have responses to Germany as we do to so much else. In general, readers compliantly accept what they are offered. Their chief concern is, “how readable is the text”. For the most part, novels about Germany, or those simply located in Germany, without having to raise the question of, ‘How German is it?’ resolve the unspoken question by explaining Germany. In...