Frenchman Perec ably pens A Void despite eschewing letter 'E'

Arts and Entertainment Editor

Courtesy of Harvill

French novelist Georges Perec (1936-1982), whose maddening yet engaging novel A Void contains not a single e.

During my vacation from rigours of scholarly toil, I found I had many uncommonly vacant hours during which I could indulgingly slum in my room (with air conditioning, natch; Virginia's hot in dog days) and flip through books. Such a book was A Void, a work from a Gallic chum (initials G. P.; look to your right, silly!) and put into our own syntax by a daring translator of no small skill, Mr. G. Adair.

For A Void lacks a crucial glyph, a symbol no doubt oft-drawn by you with your quill in hand, smart patron of our own Old Gold and Black. This symbol sits 'twixt D and F in our catalog of orthographic tools, #5 in our ABCs, and as I spin this bookish appraisal I avoid it much as A Void''s author did.

Sorry, but I can't say it, or I'd ruin my sporting try to scratch out my first lipogram, that is to say, a work of writing which avoids using a particular symbol or group of symbols as a way of, truthfully, showing off skills which distinguish an author as a cunning linguist.

This glyph sitting 'twixt D and F is a crux of our words, occupying many blanks in words such as th-, h-, h-r, sh-, -t c-t-ra. You catch my drift, no? So dig this, man: a 283-pg. manuscript without that common fallback at an author's disposal!

But that's not A Void's only odd trait and claim to individuality. Obviously, G. P.'s a man with a lot of damn Gall, and that chap laid down A Void in francais; at that point it was La Disparition. Mr. P was a singularly brilliant author who was six ft. down all too soon (at 46), but in his short span in our world did us good with a body of work including crosswords, puns, "Madam, I'm Adam"s, radio plays, columns and award-winning works, including his book Things.

Translator Adair, just as dashing, had to put La Disparition in our words with Mr. P's odd stipulation, too. Zoinks! Tough job, but this man had chops: columnist, author, translator, hung around in Paris, Dijon, Lyon and vicinity for 3,650 days (do your math).

Not only is A Void void of you-know-what, but its twisty plot is a hallmark of wit, thought, daring, wordplay, brio and skill. Protagonist and Parisian Anton Vowl is an insomniac; whiling away hours studying a rug in his flat, Vowl sinks into a void of his own mind's construction and almost sits upon sanity's brink. Soon into A Void, Vowl is contradictorily "found missing" upon a pal's inquiry into his location. Not in his flat, not around at all.

Vowl's vanishing act sparks a bunch of plot twists that, truth told, can try your wits on occasion. This book's author's approach to writing is playful, which is okay, but you must play along or you may tag along only to find frustration at his hands and digit-tips. A Void is truthfully only for an odd sort of mind, and if you dig puns, allusion, absurdity and a ludic (if not ludicrous) wit, you'll dig A Void.

Munch on this particular translation of "Shakspar's" famous soliloquy (a DMV could call it "2B-NOT2B?" but Vowl calls it "Living, Or Not Living"):

Living, or not living: that is what I ask:

If 'tis a stamp of honour to submit

To slings and arrows waft'd us by ill winds

Or brandish arms against a flood of afflictions,

Which by our opposition is subdu'd?

Although it's chockablock with wit and fun, I had a coupla complaints about A Void, I must say. Its author can wax wordy and go far off track, and I also had difficulty ignoring his parody's odd rhythm at first but, you must grasp this, Mr. P couldn't avoid such quirky rhythm in writing A Void, mostly as a byproduct of his singularly rough and tough constraints.