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An Entire Novel Without the Letter 'e'

Jun 7 2008 | Views 214 | Comments (4)

Okay, so all those who have got that sharp memory might remember that I had earlier told you all a... Expand

Okay, so all those who have got that sharp memory might remember that I had earlier told you all about An Entire Novel With No Verbs. But here comes another amazing feat that has been achieved by Earnst Wright..

"Gadsby" is a novel by Earnst Wincent Wright written around 1939. It is famous for containing the letter'e', the most common letter in the English language! To top it all, let me tell you that the novel is more than 50,000 words long and has 267 pages!!

If you don't believe me, let me clarify what Wikipedia says about this novel:

The novel is about 50,100 words long.

The lack of the letter 'e' makes Gadsby a lipogram, or an example of constrained writing.

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.

Wright never saw his work in print - he died at the age of 66 on the day it was published.

You can read here the Introduction of the novel by the author, in which he even states that:

THE ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT of this story was written with the E type-bar of the typewriter tied down; thus making it impossible for that letter to be printed. This was done so that none of that vowel might slip in, accidentally.

Now, wasn't that interesting?

Now, if you infer that 'e' is one of the letters we may not be using in our writings much, let me further point out to the fact that you are mistaken here too!

The letter 'e' is the most commonly used letter in English language (frequency being 12.70 %), followed by the letter 't' which has a frequency of usage of only 9.05 %. The letter frequency chart shows letters in this order:

e t a o i n s r h l d c u m f p g w y b v k x j q z

If you think it's sheer madness or it is very difficult to write such a lengthy novel, let me tell you that this is not the only one such book.

La Disparition ("The Disappearance") is another 300 page French lipogrammatic novel, written in 1969 by Georges Perec, " without the letter "e". The English translation Gilbert Adair is named "A Void".

But if you still think that it is easy, try writing a single meaningful paragraph in the comment box without the letter 'e'