A Void Indeed

A man named George Perec wrote a novel, La Disparition, in which he did not use the letter E even a single time. The book has also been translated into English, following the same strictures; the translation by Gilbert Adair is titled A Void. Daughter Michelle made me a gift of this book a while back, and it is fun to read within it. Here and there it contains famous English poetry but rendered entirely E-less.

Brigitte and I, yesterday, dictionaries in our laps, held a fascinating discussion. The subject? The differences between English and German, specifically that in German it is quite easy to avoid using words with Latin and Greek roots—and roots in other languages derived from these originals. Then A Void occurred to me—namely that writing a novel in English while avoiding “derivative” words like that would be far more difficult to do than simply to dispense with a single letter.

This and the next two sentences might be a case in point. The more abstract the concepts used, the more difficult to avoid employing words and phrases born somewhere else than in the British isles pre-Norman conquest. I’ll give it a college try and translate this paragraph into pure English next.

This and the next two sets of meanings marked by an ending dot might bring out what I have in mind. The farther from stuff the thought-marker in our head, the harder it is to side-step putting to work words or clusters born somewhere else than on the British island before the Norman overwhelm. I’ll give it a higher-learning-clan-abode stab and put this cut of writing into sinless English next.