Gadsby (novel)

Gadsby is a well-known book by the American writer Ernest Vincent Wright. It was published in 1939.

The peculiarity of the amendment is that throughout the book not once the letter " e" occurs, which is both in German and in English, the most frequent letter. Gadsby is therefore a Lipogramm. It contains a total of 50,100 words and Wright's fourth book. In order to prevent it but once an "e" wrote by mistake, band Wright, as he writes in the introduction to Gadsby, simply type lever for the "e" at his typewriter fixed, so that it did not move, even if Wright would have typed the button once.

Text example

The beginning of the book reads as follows:

If youth, Throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world did a child can think; and, Possibly, do it Practically; you would not Constantly run across folks today who claimsoft that " a child do not know anything. " A child's brain starts functioning at birth; and HAS, amongst its many infant convolutions, Thousands of dormant atom, into Which God Has put a mystic Possibility for noticing on adult 's act, and figuring out its purport.

This would mean roughly translated to German:

If the youth would have had an advocate in the entire history of humanity, to show a doubting world that a child can think and it probably does, no one would run around and say "A child knows nothing! ". A child's brain starts to work with the birth and has, in addition to his many childish turns, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put the mysterious ability to recognize the actions of an adult and find out his intentions.

The excessive use of punctuation continues throughout the plant, as Wright Lipogramm was only possible in this way.

Wright died on the day of the publication of his work at the age of 66 years.

Gadsby but must be considered not only as a mere curiosity, but it rises, like most other Lipogramme also claim to a very specific view of language, and thus to raise the reality.