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| Source: Project Gutenberg |
An Oddball Author and His Oddball Novel
It sounds astonishing and, you’d think, a bit pointless too that someone wrote a book that contains 50,000 words without ‘I, the most common letter in English. Well, Ernest Vincent Wright is one such person. Challenging himself to not write a single word that contains ‘I, he wrote Gadsby in 1939.
A work that deliberately avoids a letter or a group of letters is known as a lipogram. Gadsby is a book for lovers of such constrained writing. It's a truly difficult task to achieve and it goes to show just how ambitious Ernest was, though you can probably catch him cheating and spot an E or two (as I did), it's forgivable I guess.
The Preface to a Linguistically Admirable Feat
The book starts off with an introduction and since it's not exactly a part of the story, it's not restrained by the rules of a lipogram. Here, Wright explains the difficulties he came across while writing this gold example of a lipogram.
Wright says that the primary obstacle was to avoid the ‘~ed’ suffix for past tense verbs. So, instead, he made significant use of verbs without the ~ed suffix and constructs including the word “do”, like “walked” became “did walk” and so on.
He couldn’t use pronouns either such as he, she, they, them, their, her, herself, myself, yourself, etc. which is a very difficult task to achieve. ‘E’ is used a lot in the English language. Most common words, pronouns, and quantities have ‘I'm in them so the word choice was pretty limited. He was even unable to use any numbers written as words between six and thirty.
The use of abbreviations whose full form isn’t similarly lipogrammatic is also a no-go. So Wright could use abbreviations such as ‘Dr.’ (doctor) but had to steer clear of the ones like ‘Mr.’ (mister). He even changed certain quotes from authors into lipogrammatic form like turning John Keats’ “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” into “a charming thing is a joy always”.
Words are very impactful and what is a novel but a collection of these words used in the right way to convey the emotions the author feels and wants us to feel. Simply changing the words, even though the meaning might be the same, loses some flare because each word evokes a different emotion.
Being so restricted and not being able to talk about the things you want to talk about or use the words that say exactly what you want to say is taking it a bit too far, right? In my opinion, it is. It’s simply too hard but that just goes to show what a praise-worthy thing it is to have such a skill.
A Little Bit About the Plot
The book is about fifty-year-old John Gadsby, living in the fictitious town of Branton Hills. After seeing the declining state of his hometown, he decides to form an “Organisation of Youth” with the young people of the city to build civic spirit and improve the living standards.
Despite some pushback, Gadsby and his youthful army convert Branton Hills from a stagnating municipality into a vibrant, thriving city. Members of Gadsby's organization receive diplomas in recognition of their efforts near the end of the book. Gadsby is elected mayor and aids in the growth of Branton Hills from 2,000 to 60,000 residents.
The story begins around 1906 and continues through World War I, Prohibition, and President Warren G. Harding’s presidency. The first part of the book (a quarter of the book’s total length) talks majorly about the history of Branton Hills and John Gadsby, whereas the book's primary characters are fleshed out in the second half of the book.
Review of the Book
This book is more known as a lipogram than an interesting read and well I agree on that point. In the beginning, I was only curious about the book that has no Es and the guy who was bored enough or had too much free time on his hands to actually pull off such a stunt and while reading the book I was actually a bit distracted, searching for an e if I could find one (to be honest who wouldn’t).
But after reading the book, it's like I had a newfound respect for Wright. Though the flow of the narrative wasn’t very smooth and felt like I was reading a mellowed version of a dictionary, well since his word choice was limited, I’m sure Wright just ate the whole dictionary. But the sheer effort that went into writing the whole thing is commendable.
I won’t recommend the book for its story. Wright himself said that he didn’t write the book to attain any literary merit but rather because he kept hearing that writing something that didn’t contain ‘e’, a vowel used five times more often than any other letter, is an impossible task and cannot be accomplished.
Though the story was humorous on occasion, there were no conflicts, no arguments, not much drama either and the atmosphere doesn’t change even when the war arrives. It was a bit boring and nothing really happened. Nonetheless, you can read the book to quench your curiosity, especially the preface which was actually quite interesting to read.
Some Other Works of Constrained Writing
In 1969, French experimental author Georges Perec published La Disparition, a novel that omitted the letter e, which is very difficult to do in French. Its English version is called A Void, and kudos to Gilbert Adair, the translator, who also managed to avoid the letter e.
In 1957, American comic James Thurber published The Wonderful O, a children's book in which the letter 'O' is forbidden to be used. Lipogram tasks have also appeared on television shows such as How I Met Your Mother and Gilmore Girls.
We can find lipogrammatic works even from the pre-modern era. Tryphiodorus, a Greek poet, created the epic poem Odyssey, which chronicles the adventures of Ulysses, omitting a letter of the alphabet from each of the 24 books. As a result, the first book had no alpha, the second had no beta, and so on.
Some of Shakespeare’s plays have also been rewritten, excluding certain vowels. Gyles Brandreth rewrote Hamlet without ‘I’, Macbeth without ‘A’ or ‘E’, Twelfth Night without ‘O’ or ‘L’ and Othello without ‘O’ (though I don’t know he rewrote Othello without any Os when the protagonist himself has two in his name).
Written By - Sanjana Chaudhary
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