Has anyone else heard about this?
[www.monsoonbooks.com.sg]

Apparently it's been out for six months. It's a 60,000 word novel written without using the letter 'e' (a lipogram, in other words). 60,000 words would make it the second longest lipogram of 'e' ever written in English (*the* longest to be originally written in English, considering that "A Void" was a translation of the French "La disparition").

I would have expected more fuss over this achievement, but apparently not. I suspect the author's done himself no favours by:
a) using a pseudonym, and indeed generally avoiding publicity;
b) having his book published by a small press in Singapore;
c) choosing intellectual density over readability (just my opinion, but have a look at the sample chapter and decide for yourselves).

What do people reckon? Is this a potential big literary event that's been hobbled by poor marketing choices, or is this just not the sort of thing readers in general care about these days?

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work is a vampire that sucks me dry
which is a metaphor
but still the reason I stuck a chair leg through my manager

This is pretty fun- although I'm not sure I could manage the whole book- it's only *slightly* more likely to float than Finnegan's wake.

Why, why would you do that?

I think I'll wait till he gets up to "z" before I try reading a whole one.

Agreed! it is a remarkable human achievement, and is something all the AI experts will have to go a long way down time to be able to equal.

But it still raises the question of whether something can be done means that it must be done?

Like many show cat and dog breeds why would you want to do that?

Well, the main reason would be for the fun of it. To be honest, though, I would have thought the kudos would be a pretty big incentive. Not that this guy's gone out of his way to collect the kudos.

Ernest Wright wrote "Gadsby" (50,000 words) just to prove a point, because he'd heard it said that it couldn't be done. As far as I know he never wrote anything else. His novel's extremely readable but nothing spectacular.

On the other hand, Georges Perec wrote "La disparition" (no definite word count, looks like about 100,000-ish) under the auspices of the OuLiPo, a literary movement with the working philosophy that writing under self-imposed constraints would give rise to original and vibrant literature. For example, if you don't allow yourself to use the letter "e" in your novel, you're forced to find other ways of expressing yourself, which means by necessity that you avoid all the obvious, cliched material you might otherwise subconsciously fall back on. And not only is his novel readable, it also goes for extra cheeky points by being *about* the absence of the letter "e".

The sample chapter of "Unhooking" isn't very readable, but there's obviously a large game element to it. I've got a copy waiting on the shelf now, will have a better idea of what the author's intention was when I've had a chance to read it.

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work is a vampire that sucks me dry
which is a metaphor
but still the reason I stuck a chair leg through my manager

Adrian wrote:

"For example, if you don't allow yourself to use the letter "e" in your novel, you're forced to find other ways of expressing yourself, which means by necessity that you avoid all the obvious, cliched material you might otherwise subconsciously fall back on."

Which is fairly true in and of itself, and I'd agree. But there are many other ways to avoid cliche and some of these may have involved use of the letter 'e'. So I'm not sure that such a large restriction produces anything but a grotesque confabulation such as evidenced in the linked example. Did anyone read it and actually think, "Gee, Id like to read more"? God, I didn't!

If one cut off one of one's toes, one is therefore removing oneself from the 'cliche' of a human being as being ten-toed. But would anyone give a hoot? And, in the end result, would it actually make you something other than human anyway, except for the fact that you found it difficult to walk, and therefore a bit awkward?

How, for instance, would Adrian rewrite the quoted passage above without the letter 'e', and why would anyone consider his quoted passage to be 'cliched material' simply because he uses the letter 'e' within it? Surely it's representative of his opinion (which I respect) but would it be more forceful if he expressed it while ignoring a random letter of the alphabet?

I'm sorry, but this whole notion is just a gimmick in my opinion. (My last sentence was written without the aid of the letters d, f, h, q, u, v, x and z; which is nearly a quarter of the alphabet; can I have a government grant please?)

You're in grumpy old man mode again Robert... Reboot!

mumble, mumble, darned young whippersnapper, mumble, mumble

I grant you I'm not much looking forward to reading the rest of the book based on the linked sample (although I feel compelled to because this is an area of interest for me). But for goodness' sake don't imagine that lipogrammatic writing is all like that. I'd really recommend "A Void" by Gilbert Adair as a good read in its own right.

And it's not *just* a gimmick. It *is* a gimmick, but it's not just that - it's playful. (And look, there's two entire coherent sentences without "e" in them, although that wasn't actually intentional...) "Ludic" is a word I've seen applied to this and other kinds of writing that piss about with words - it's ludic fiction. It is more for the lark of it than just for the sake of it.

And FWIW, no one's yet received a government grant for lipogrammatic writing, you old Disgusted Of Norfolk, you.

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work is a vampire that sucks me dry
which is a metaphor
but still the reason I stuck a chair leg through my manager

Nothing wrong with a good gimmick, as any fan of KISS would say- but I don't think this will qualify...

Fear of headaches keeps me from attempting to read a sample of the work-
I figure it'll be stilted since certain pronouns, past tense & such would automatically be forbidden...

Wouldn't we be better off just reading Joyce?

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60,000 words without an E is an achievement, but I've read several hundred thousand words with out a bit of commonsense in them.

Like Keith Nozick; (If you don't know, don't ask - he's not worth reading unless you want bad philosophy badly presented)

And Liberal Party of Australia political manifestos;

pronouncements from the Slick what is our current premier;

The Advertiser (which is Adelaide's local paper and a Murdoch Press unit);

nearly all religious tracts, especially those from the less directly mainstream - ie, the nutters.

Nutty religious TRACTS also have the ADVANTAGE of being WRITTEN with about EVERY third word CAPITALISED.

(cf also: terrorists, JFK, world zionist conspiracy theories - often all covered together in the same randomly capitalised document)

I have read a few Steve Aylett novels and recommend them to anyone looking for a headache.

I came across a book on religious revivals among my father's papers.

It had the UPPERCASE emphasising of which Robert writes.

Now I always thought that my father was an intelligent person and without the bigotry of religion but why he would keep such a load of tripe which reads more like a historical tract on mass delusions I don't know!

He was a vet and as far as my experience goes the closest an animal gets to religious madness is either sex or delicious food.

Maybe he was keeping it to remind him of who the intelligent beings on the planet really are.

This is the only forum that I've ever visited but it strikes me how alarmingly similar it is to the "At Homes" thrown by the Edwardians.

You are able to turn up unannounced, but must stay for no more than 15 minutes. You may take tea and biscuits/cakes/the occasional sandwich and are to discourse on matters of general interest.

You must, at all costs, avoid politics and religion or anything else likely to cause disagreement.

Loving the idea of bunyip turning up in an indignant fury, disgustedly throwing religious tracts on the occasional table, causing the teacups to rattle and the rest of us to look askance before returning to the gentile subject of a novel written entirely without the use of the letter E.

Lovely weather we're having. Could somebody pass the jaffa cakes please?

Certainly, I believe you were about to tell me about your Aunt?

Fascinating article on lace-making in this week's parish news.

Gordon Brown's looking grey this week.

No he isn't.

(Drat! They were right politics does cause disagreements.)

Sorry, yes, isn't he? Have a Jaffa cake? Window cake?