Gadsby (novel)
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| Gadsby | |
| Author | Ernest Vincent Wright |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fiction |
| Publisher | Wetzel Publishing Co. Inc. |
| Publication date | 1939 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 267 pp (hardcover edition) |
| ISBN | 978-0899684451 |
Gadsby is a novel by Ernest Vincent Wright, written around 1939. It is famous for not containing the letter 'e', the most common letter in the English language.[1] The novel is about 50,100 words long.
The lack of the letter 'e' makes Gadsby a lipogram, or an example of constrained writing. Wright explains in the introduction that he had to tie down the 'E' key of his typewriter to avoid mistakes.[2]
The story tells how the main character, John Gadsby, transforms his home town of Branton Hills into a bustling city by tapping the vigour and original thought of youth. Quoting from its first paragraph:
| “ |
If youth, throughout all history, had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn't constantly run across folks today who claim that "a child don't know anything." A child's brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult's act, and figuring out its purport. |
” |
|
—Gadsby, Ernest Vincent Wright |
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The use of odd punctuation, contrived language, and disjointed air carry on throughout the book.
As well as having to avoid common words such as 'the', 'he', and 'she', Wright made the task particularly hard for himself by setting Gadsby in the past tense, while avoiding the verb ending '-ed'. He also made valiant attempts to include objects that ordinarily require the letter E, such as a horse-drawn fire engine; he achieved this by describing the object without quite naming it. A Thanksgiving turkey (possessing the letter 'e') is identified by Wright as a 'holiday bird'.
Wright never saw his work in print—he died at the age of 66 on the day it was published.
A similar lipogrammatic book is Georges Perec's La Disparition (1969), which was later translated into English by Scottish author Gilbert Adair as A Void (1994).
[edit] References
- ^ Frequency of Letter "E" is determined. URL last accessed 22 January 2007.
- ^ Gadsby from Spineless Books. URL last accessed 22 January 2007.
[edit] See also
- La Disparition [French], translated to A Void [English] and several others — a novel without the letter 'e'.
- Le Train de Nulle Part [French] — a novel without any verbs.
