Thursday, November 04, 2010

Fun Fact


Did you know that in 1939, a particular author, Mr. Wright, thought up a book 50,000 words long without using a symbol following "D" but prior to "F?"  This author of "Gadsby" took pains to lock stationary this symbol button on his typing apparatus so it wouldn't work.  That's just crazy!  How could such a notion occur to him?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing notion. Could this discussion do without it too? Wait and watch it unfold ...

Anonymous said...

I know about a Franco book without this symbol, La Disparition (1969). In 2009 a translator did modify a paraphrasing of that book into Dutch (I think that was also a hard job to do). I didn’t know that this book about Gadsby was first. This Franco author also did pull out a book only using this symbol and the consonants!

Merideth in Wyoming said...

Too funny. I cannot imagine it was much of a book to read with a great story line.

Nate Maas said...

To M. in Wyoming, thanks, but today all of us must try to only print communications with A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, U, V, W, X, Y, or Z. For illustrations, look at Claudio and Rob from Holland's posts. Good job, guys!

Anonymous said...

Bravo to all 'hommes'. You did good. I do not have vocabulary to do that.
El

Anonymous said...

PS
ha ha, I wrote 'hommes' to avoid writing male. Soooooo smart not to say clever.
EL

Nate Maas said...

Valiant try, I say, my hat's off to all who hazard a crack at it!

Jules said...

crazy. out of his mind. why would this author do this? mayhap I could try a book without "a" and find my soul on Oprah.
(I think I will allow my kids to try writing as this for school in coming days!)

Astrocrabpuff said...

@Rob I actually own the English translation of "La Disparition", which is titled "A Void". Clever works by author and translators.

MiltonBaker said...

This is the right blog for anyone who wants to find out about this topic. You realize so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually would want…HaHa). You definitely put a new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Great stuff, just great!

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