Gadsby

 

Gadsby 50,000 words novel without the letter "E "

By Khalid Siddiqui
Ohio

Here is an unusual book for those in the Group who are still interested in books. It is a lipogram. Lipogram is defined as a written work that intentionally omits a specific letter or group of letters. ‘E’ and ‘The’ is the most common letter and word, respectively, in the English language.

The book is unusual not because of its content but for its format. It has over 50,000 words, but doesn’t have the letter ‘e’ or the word ‘the’ in it. It contains 152 pages in small print which could easily have been 200 pages if written in today’s normal font size. The book was written by Ernest Vincent Wright of California in 1939.

He completed the book in five and a half months. The manuscript was first written in long-hand. The final copy was typed by him. To avoid any error, he removed the key for the letter ‘e’ from his typewriter. Despite such a huge limitation, the book maintains a good flow. Nowhere the absence of ‘the’ is felt. 

The book is about a retired civic-minded government official who was frustrated by the decline of his hometown that had become boring with no social activities. He gathered a group of young energetic people and motivated them to make the town livelier. I had the book with me for quite some time but I rediscovered it recently when I was arranging my bookshelves.

Here is a paragraph from the book: