In Not Blessed, a story is told not once, but twenty-eight times in twenty-eight shifting versions. Here, a story acts as a chosen narrative constraint, a constraint which, once chosen, becomes a compulsion within the text, a landing point the narrator must reach again and again. Not Blessed: a brilliant twist of a tale, where narrative is spun like politics in the nightly news, deployed in a language that delights and distorts as it winds toward the trauma of non-truth and multiple non-originals. Not Blessed asks: what is the what that makes who?
“Set in a frightening and indeterminate present, this bitter and masterful parable demonstrates the somnambulant power of language. The recurrent memory track studded with Euro pre-modernist signifiers (grandmother – village – boy – policeman – prominent figure – meadow – field) moves incrementally backwards towards no particular end. Channeling the early plays of Peter Handke, Abramowitz draws us into the narrator’s suspect nostalgia: In the southern part of the country when the space was open, and when there were still people to share things with … —Chris Kraus
“Runic, rhythmic, algorithmic, Not Blessed mesmerizes with a hidden logic. Through a series of finely calibrated repetitions, Abramowitz nimbly looses the old moorings—beginning, middle and end—setting us adrift on the sea of memory. —Janet Sarbanes
REVIEWS:
--Keith Meatto, New Pages: http://www.newpages.com/bookreviews/2...
--Spencer Dew, decomP Magazine: http://www.decompmagazine.com/notbles...
