Customer Reviews

Gadsby

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

After hearing about this book, for years I was intrigued as to how anyone could possibly write a page, much less a book, without the letter "e". Finally I found a copy (in the rare book room of New York City's main library!) and by jove, the man did it! (As the reviewer below notes, the introduction does include the letter e - which the author humoursly notes might be cheating the whole enterprise. He also tells us the e's, after gathering around but never getting to enter the pages, sulk off cyring back something like "that's a fine yarn you'll have without *us* arround!"). I only had time to read a bit of the book before the library closed, but it seemed a fun young adult-type book written by a warm man who had a stroke of genius. Hats off and get this thing back in print!

This review refers *only* to the Ramble House / Fender Tucker edition, 2005/6.

I bought this edition from the publisher (Ramble House / Fender Tucker) in May 2006. I compared it carefully with my copy of the original edition (1939). I was disappointed to find HUNDREDS OF ERRORS in the Ramble House edition -- including some real howlers like "Smiting" (page 164) for "Smiling" (in the original, page 252).

On the whole it appears that this edition (Ramble House / Fender Tucker) was printed from a defective e-text made from a fuzzy photocopy of the original edition. And since there are already a number of defective e-texts on line, it's hard to see why we need one in print.

I have actually read this book. It tells the story of the youth of a small town, and the many projects they take on, such as building a zoo, etc. It gets pretty slow in spots, but I thought it was fun to read just because of the lack of the letter 'e'. The introduction says that the author tied the 'e' key of his typewriter down so as not use use it by mistake.

Gadsby is a triumph of circumlocution. Its author has wrought a story (and not a short story, but a fifty-thousand word-long yarn) in which that most common atom of any word is strictly out of play. Wright actually had to jam a button on his typing apparatus to avoid slipping up and using this ubiquitous symbol. His work stands as a glory to man's spirit, that spirit that looks for difficult things to do simply for fun or satisfaction. Isn't that why folk climb mountains, nations shoot astronauts into orbit, and many try to finish Prousts's most famous work?

But what of Wright's story, in its own right? It's a bit of an oddity, not much akin to your standard thrilling horror or action romp. It's about a bustling and philanthropic chap of "about fifty", Gadsby, who hits on a plan to "doll up" his snoozy town, Branton Hills, through co-opting its kids skills and "oomph". It all has a boy-scoutish air about it. Gadsby (who is soon mayor of Branton Hills) again and again draws cash from his town's rich to fund his various plans: a zoo, a radio station, a night-school, a library and what our author must call "a film-show" to maintain his "odd yarn's strict orthography". (Is Gadsby a sly satirical spoof of socialism and rampant municipal output, a cryptic dig at FDR and his ilk? Who knows?)

I didn't mind Gadsby's almost total lack of risk, hazard or conflict. Art, it is always said, should know no dogma. But how many fictions can do without animosity, fighting, iniquity, pain, agony, fatality? Why can our yarns not focus on happy and normal things, on ordinary triumphs and small stumbling blocks? That, and not Gadsby's "strict orthography", may stand as its signal triumph.

But mayhap you think such a book must grow boring, as soon as its gimmick stops amusing. Is Gadsby just a curio? Not so, in truth. Bring to mind, if you will, how a handicap or a difficulty may turn out an actual spur to imagination, to flair and to art--much as that Islamic ban on picturing humans or animals brought about such wondrous abstract art and calligraphy . Gadsby's writing has a roundabout, piquant, unorthodox flavour. It is in its own class; no book is similar to it. How many authors strain for originality! What a small fraction of all books can truly claim that trait! But Gadsby can, and not just for its famous gimmick.

I wind up with a quotation that shows Wright's quirky mind, as fits a man who would think up and follow through on such a notion as this book. Location, Branton Hill's zoo: "A boy grinningly `got a girl's goat' by wanting to kis a fifty-foot anaconda; causing Lucy to say, haughtily, that `No boy, wanting to kiss such horrid, wriggly things can kiss us Branton Hills girls.' (Good for you, Lucy! I'd pass up a sixty-foot anaconda, any day, for you!)"

This was a very low quality book. The pages were cheap feeling paper, and the cover was very grainy looking. Like if you stretch a picture on a computer. I would look for a higher quality book if I were you. The size of the book was weird. It looks more like a college text book than a novel.

This book is totally worth reading if you're interested analysing in how he managed to write a novel without using the letter "e", but by god don't read it hoping for a good story - Wright was a terrible writer.

It's proportionately wrong to feel like a proper book. Cover looks like they stretched out the image on MS Paint and the paper is extremely low quality. If they had kept it the size of an average book it would be decent but it's uncomfortable to read and feels as if you're reading an 8th graders math workbook. They made it so large that and thin that it looks like a child's picture book. There are no marks that tell you where the introduction ends and the real story begins or anywhere marking new chapters. Incredibly disappointing.

You must look at this book, as it has no "e"'s in it, similiar to this short r*vi*w. PS: I'm not as good at it as Mr.Wright was.

Gadsby by Earnest Vincent Wright is a tour de fouce. It well knownin certain cryptographic circles. It avoids the use of the letter "e", thus words such as "the", "are" "use" or "letter" do not appear. This is interesting to cryptographers becasue cracking cryptographic codes are based on determinng the frequency of the lsetters in a coded message and replacing the most common to "e", the next to "T'T etc. (This explanation is oversimplified.)

It is reportedly a passidly good nove.

this book was severely lacking of the letter "e". maybe the author should have included the letter "e" more often.