This was from a “Amazing Facts” book or something. It said that there was a book written with over a thousand words that never used the letter “e”. And the author didn’t mean to do this. Could someone tell me the title of the book, the author, and what the book is about?
The book is Gadsby, by Ernest V. Wright. I haven’t a clue what it’s about, but here’s the first line:
And no, I don’t know what’s with all the semicolons.
Wow a book with over a thousand words? Look out War and Peace, there’s a new heavyweight in town.
I’m sure there are several million books that don’t use the letter ‘e’ anywhere in them. Chinese books, Japanese books, Hebrew books, Arabic books, Egyptian heiroglyph books…
As for English, it seems really unlikely that you could ‘accidentally’ leave out ‘e.’ But then again, if it was in a book of “Amazing Facts,” who knows?
Oh. Well, there you go. Fine, Fretful Porcupine, just go ahead and make my smart-assed reply look even more stupid than the average smart-assed reply.
Found a reference to “Gadsby” in one of the Wallace family’s “Book of Lists” series. Second book, I think. Anyway, they stated that “Gadsby” was a credible book containing 10,000 words without a single use of the letter “e”.
“It’s only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here.”
GADSBY was not written by chance. The author worked very hard to avoid the use of the letter “e.”
And a thousand words fits on about four double spaced, typewritten pages. It would be easier to write that much without an “e.”
BTW, this sort of thing is called a lipogram.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
On the subject of lipograms, the second century poet Septimus Nestor supposedly rewrote the Iliad so that each book of the epic was missing a different letter of the alphabet in order. Another poet, Tryphiodorus, then supposedly did the same for the Odyssey. Unfortunately both of these works have been lost.
And what is the reward for lipogramming? If I post an article without even one bit of sense in it, will I acquire a bunch of liposuckers as fans?
This post contains contains absolutely no fat. . .or anything else.
Ray (What do you mean “if”?)
Reminds me of another book, “Alphabetical Africa” by Walter Abish. The book has 52 chapters; in the first one, every word begins with the letter A; the second chapter, A or B; and so on. After the full alphabet, the chapters remove the word-starting letters one by one, starting with Z.
I’m holding a copy of Georges Perec’s 1969 “La Disparition” it’s a couple hundred pages, written in French, not one “e.” I also have the 1994 English translation by Gilbert Adair “A Void.” No one I have ever showed these books to has ever begun to read the story, they just scan for "e"s–“Here’s one! Oh wait, nevermind.” It reads like some secret love child of Jan Potocki and Douglas Adams. Perec later wrote “Les Revenentes” using “e” as the only vowel (I guess he had a few left over).
martin
Gadsby was not a mere 1000 words long, nor even 10,000 words long.
Gadsby was a full-fledged novel, weighing in at just over 50,000 words.