E Z WRITER

I enjoyed Richard Eder’s lively review of “A Void,” the novel by French author Georges Perec that contains not a single use of the letter e . It is good to hear that a literary stunt can be pulled off in a manner that also creates a good reading experience. Eder and your readers may be interested to know that this is not by any means the first work of its kind. In 1939, a Los Angeles publishing house put out “Gadsby,” a novel by Ernest Vincent Wright, also eschewing use of the ubiquitous e. Then, as well, the first wave of reviewers missed the point, crediting Wright vaguely with “innovations” of style. The accomplishment was all the more impressive for Wright’s lack of modern tools. With today’s on-line spell-checkers, finders and thesauri, such stunts become much easier. The bar has been raised. I want to see a book without e , t and a !

DAVID BRIN, ENCINITAS