Pym for Poe

"The 1969 novel A Void, notable for not containing a single letter e, contains an e-less rewriting of Poe's 'The Raven' that is attributed to Arthur Gordon Pym in order to avoid using the multiple e's found in Poe's name."  (from here)

Comments

[Lance]

Improbable? Really? I guess I found it not all that surprising.

[The Tensor]

Well, current search-engine evidence suggests it's no more probable than (1 / the number of sentences on the web), at least until Google re-indexes this blog.

So that's something.

[Andrew]

I just read about that in Hofstadter's "Le Ton Beau de Marot" recently.

I love the internet.

[jre]

Some years ago, when I was in grad school, I learned of Ernest Vincent Wright's lipogrammatic novel Gadsby. At that time, it was being passed from hand to hand and Xeroxed, samizdat-fashion. I eagerly borrowed and copied it, and still have my copy somewhere. I see that it is now available on the Web. A good thing, to be sure, but nerds of the future will not know the same thrill of discovery. Trivia tidbit: I understand that Wright tied down the "e" key on his typewriter so he wouldn't screw up in a careless moment.