I just learned about Georges Perec‘s 2005 novel A Void (translated
from the French by Gilbert Adair): As the New Yorker explains:
“Here is a true tour de force: a novel without
a single letter E. The translator’s dazzling re-creation
of the French original conveys the author’s near magical
cleverness while preserving an underlying seriousness
that makes this book much more than a curiosity.”
A Void‘s publisher says:
A Void is a metaphysical whodunit …. It is also an out-
rageous verbal stunt: a 300-page novel that never once
employs the letter E. Adair’s translation, too, is astounding;
Time called it “a daunting triumph of will pushing its way
through imposing roadblocks to a magical country, an
absurdist nirvana of humor, pathos, and loss.”
Not only has Perec saved a lot of e’s for us to send to Robert Soble’s
Flickr trendoids, he has also inspired me to attempt this game on
a very micrio scale — with my own haiku. I quickly learned how
difficult eschewing that vowel can be.
Looking through the hundreds of haiku and senryu that dagosan
posted at f/k/a last year, it became clear that not using e’s does
not come naturally — none of my poems was e-less (even though
they are almost always shorter than 17 syllables). Today, with a
little struggle, this paltry example arose from the depths of my
pysche:
our long
bathtub soak —
almost a full moon
dagosan
My Schenectady neighbor, Honored Guest Yu Chang has a
name that promises e-lessness. Nonetheless, out of approx-
imately 50 of his poems that have appeared here, only one
has no e:
rough landing
the warmth
of your hand
Yu Chang– Upstate Dim Sum (2004/I
I’m going to search my Yu Chang collection to see if I can find
more. Meanwhile, I’m asking all the haijin out there to submit, by
email or as a Comment, some haiku-sans-e. Please don’t cheat by
resorting to extremely truncated poems. Let’s make 9 or 10 syllables
(as in the dagosan example above) the minimum. One tactic
might be taking one of your favorite haiku and re-writing it without
an e.
Everyone is invited to join in this exercise, but if you don’t know what
we mean here by “real haiku,” please read “is it or ain’t it haiku?” for
a quick lesson. (Yes, the Haiku Police are on patrol.)
If the book is as good as the critics have suggested, Georges Perec
deserves a hat-tip for his achievement in A Void. I’ve got about
299 pages to go to catch up. Now, it’s your turn.
update (Feb. 8, 8 P.M.): For a brief glimpse of the wit and erudition
that won George Wallace, and his Fool in the Forest weblog the
Blawg Review Award 2005 for “Best Personal Blog by a Legally-
Oriented Male Blogger,” see his Comment to this post, which
is a pithy, positive review of A Void, with special emphasis on the
excellent and most difficult translation performed by Gilbert Adair.
haiku-sans-e updates:
– previously published:
sting
of the old man’s
fastball
A Void, by Georges Perec –
February 8, 2006
sought: haiku-sans-e
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David,
You will perhaps be unsurprised to learn that I have actually read A Void. That M. Perec and Mr. Adair could manage in effect to write the same book in two different “e”-centric languages without once letting the forbidden vowel slip in is a thing of amazement. Adair deserves a particular hat tip, since his task in translation was perhaps harder than was Perec’s in writing the novel in the first place: Adair had not only to avoid the letter “e” but also to adhere as closely as he was able to Perec’s original in terms of plot and dialogue.
One of the book’s conceits, at least in English, is that characters are progressively killed off, each one disappearing just as he or she is on the verge of uttering a word that must unavoidably include an “e” or of actualy mentioning the letter by name. [I’m giving nothing away in making that disclosure.] More than just a clever party trick, A Void boasts a surprisingly complicated plot and a quantity of heavy French metaphysics, and would be worth a read even without its ostentatious banishment of that useful letter.
Comment by George Wallace — February 8, 2006 @ 8:00 pm
George, I’m happy to see that you could come up for air and share your experience with A Void (what work were you a-voiding?). No, I am not surprised — indeed, as I was writing this post, I thought: “Naturally, George [Wallace] has already read this book.” I just pointed to your excellent Comment in an update to this post. Do comment more often.
If you could find the time, we would all love an e-less double dactyl from you.
Comment by David Giacalone — February 8, 2006 @ 8:35 pm