Wright's book Gadsby: Champion of Youth is a 1939 work of fiction that puts forth an account of goings on in a fictitious city, "Branton Hills." It primarily has to do with a transformation, through youth's vigor, of this moribund and slothful community. John Gadsby, its protagonist—a man of fifty or so—calls upon his town's girls and boys to aid him in his plan to bring activity and vitality back to that vicinity. This story of about 50,000 words is most famous as a notably ambitious lipogram, in that it painstakingly omits a most common glyph from all of its paragraphs. It is an inspiration to similar vanguard authors; books such as A Void follow in its tracks.
[edit] Plot summaryJohn Gadsby, a thoughtful and forward-thinking man, finds with alarm that his town of Branton Hills is stagnant, sinking into sloth. His solution is to look to his city's young and form an "Organization of Youth" so as to spur transformation and twist local capitalists' arms to fund institutions such as a library, a park, and a bandstand. Against occasional opposition (such as from grumpy councilman Old Bill Simpkins), our protagonist and his youthful army transform Branton Hills from a stagnant municipality into a bustling, thriving city.[1] To honor such hard work, Gadby's gang gain diplomas and a grand show is put on for all.[2] Thrust onward by a can-do spirit, this organization campaigns for original civic construction, and Gadsby soon gains a post as mayor.
An anonymous narrator, who continuously complains about his own poor writing and circumlocution, is actually Wright, a Californian from Boston. This is shown with his allusion to Wright's own nonlipogrammatic introduction:
Wright calls his book a rollicking story of courtship and patriotism, a stand against liquor, and a portrayal of amusing political aspirations in a small growing town (Gadsby, introduction). Its chronology starts around 1906, passing through First World War days and continuing up into Prohibition and Harding's administration. [edit] IndividualsGadsby portrays Branton Hills' many inhabitants. This fictional city has a population that grows to about sixty thousand. Many individuals in this story marry during its narration—and usually quickly, "thanks to rascally 'Dan Cupid'".[3]
Branton Hills's radio station is KBH, from trans-Mississippi radio call sign "K", plus "Branton Hills". Broadway, a main highway, is in its financial district. [edit] Lipogrammatic qualityGadsby is famous (if not notorious) for its particular innovation: for all its 50,110 words,[4] it is a long lipogram, a composition avoiding a particular glyph throughout.[5] A lipogram is a form of artistic constraint that arbitrarily limits an author's vocabulary.[6] A typical short lipogram is Carroll Bombaugh's "Bold Ostrogoths, of ghosts no horror show. On London shop-fronts no hop-blossoms grow", which contains only typographic consonants and "o"'s.[7] Gadsby, by contrast, skips from "d" to "f"[8] in its subvocabulary of around 4,000 valid words, thus omitting a symbol ubiquitous to Anglic-family idioms. Notwithstanding this artistic constraint, Wright's narration is fully grammatical and lucid, though still conforming to orthographic norms. His introduction holds that his primary difficulty was avoiding typical suffixation for past actions; ablauts, modal auxiliary forms, and a short list of participials accomplish that function in Gadsby. Scarcity of vocabulary also drastically limits discussion of quantity, and availability of pronouns and many common words; Wright dryly broods about his inability to count from six to thirty (Gadsby, introduction). Word Ways, a linguistics journal, says that Wright's vocabulary could contain fully half of W. Francis's Brown Corpus, a computational analysis that lists common words; a lipogram with tight constraints, by comparison, would allow only a sixth of such a list.[9] At upwards of fifty thousand words, Wright's book allows short forms on occasion, but, as its introduction points out, only if a full form is similarly lipogrammatic, as with "Dr.", "P.S.", and "T.N.T." (trinitrotoluol). This standard holds for common contractions, including "ain't" (is not), "atta" (that a), and "dunno" (do not know); and for non-standard forms by an Irishwoman ("shmokin'" for "smoking"), an Italian ("buncha" for "bunch of"), and a young vagrant ("brung" for "brought"). Wright's subvocabulary also contains such long words as "dissatisfaction", "hospitalization", or "philosophically". Wright turns famous sayings into lipogrammatic form, such as "Music truly hath charms to calm a wild bosom", and "A charming thing is a joy always".[3] [edit] Composition and publication"Author Wright is a kindly, vivacious chap in Company D at National Military Barracks .... A World war musician, Wright's hobby always was to do unusual things. Alumnus of a famous Boston campus class ... Wright's classical foundation is thorough" (Walt Burton). Wright said his motivation for writing Gadsby was his noticing a four-stanza lipogram in print that had won significant acclamation (author now unknown), and his chafing balkily at claims that such a composition could not flow smoothly in styling and grammar.[10] In initial drafts, Frank Morgan was originally cast as "Bob": "First 'Bob' was Wright's romantic swain, but a kibitzing companion said Bob was short for a word containing a taboo symbol, so it is 'Frank' now, not Bob".[11] Wright found it "particularly annoying" that "almost through a long paragraph you can find no words ... and must go way back and start" from scratch, as if "stuck" in a hand of cards. Starting his manuscript in longhand, Wright brought it to fruition through manual typing—but "blacking" (Indy), or tying down, a solitary typing bar with string, so as to forbid nonlipogrammatic words that "might slip in ... and many did try to do so" (Gadsby, introduction). In fall of 1930, Wright was living not far from Tampa, Florida, and told a local columnist about his work so far in producing an initial lipogrammatic draft story. By his own account, Wright had in hand at that point a long, grammatical, flowing story, without any abnormally short phrasing or implicit missing idioms; Wright did not wish to show his manuscript around, but had told his story to a handful of fans, for whom it was without rival in its bulk and in its clarity of lipogrammatic composition. Wright thought that his local daily might want to sponsor a lipogram showdown by proposing a 250-dollar award ("if you think you can outdo ... a man of 60"), thus jump-starting lipogrammatic construction and possibly inspiring thousands to try such a writing constraint. (In fact, only at that dollar amount was Wright willing to risk his own story, worrying vocally about "[losing] all control of it and it is worth fully that.") But Indy staff said "that it was hardly worth" fronting a high capital award for such a poor opportunity, and did not follow through on his proposal, anticipating a scarcity of rival contributions.[12] From starting his final draft of Gadsby: Champion of Youth in 1936 during almost six months at a California military nursing facility (Walt Burton), Wright took thirty months locating a publishing firm. Finally choosing vanity publication, Wright saw his manuscript into its first run of author drafts. Rumors of his dying within hours of his book's publication lack much support, as a print copy is known with an August inscription, two months prior to Wright's passing away.[13] Gadsby was his fourth and final book.[3] Tragically, most by far of its printing run was lost in a printing-plant conflagration; a public library microform's proof copy informs most printings today (Amazon.com softback). Accordingly, an original hardback is today worth up to four thousand dollars.[13] [edit] Criticism and acclaimUpon this book's publication, critics said, "It is amazingly smooth. No halting parts. A continuity of plot and almost classic clarity obtains",[14] and, "On and on it flows. No shortcuts of words on phrasing is found, which in full would contain taboo symbols".[15] But commonly, its plot was found "languorous" and its quality both "lofty ('It is an odd kink of humanity which cannot find any valuation in spots of natural glory') and rambunctious ('Books!! Pooh! Maps! BAH!!')".[3] With authors awarding Jay Gatsby honors as most famous fictional individual (Book 2002, in Park 2002), journalists jokingly brought up Wright's circumlocutory stylings. "Lipogram aficionados—folks who lash words and (alas!) brains so as to omit particular symbols—did in fact gasp, saying, 'Hold that ringing communication tool for a bit! What about J. Gadsby?'" said a typical column.[3] David Crystal, host of a BBC Radio 4 linguistics program, found Gadsby comparing favorably to "Cat in a Hat",[16] calling it a "most ambitious work", painting a social portrait contrasting starkly with that of its famous inspiration, Gatsby.[7] La Disparition (in translation, A Void) is a similarly lipogrammatic book, arguably taking inspiration from Gadsby.[17] "Possibly in honour of Gadsby it was also 50,000 words".[13] Its author was drawn to Wright's book via a pal of his in Oulipo, a multinational wordplay organization.[18] Still, Wright was also a warning for his Gallic imitator: publication of such a work "was taking a risk" of finishing up "with nothing [but] a Gadsby", that is, a book of no fascination to critics.[19] As a nod to Wright, La Disparation contains an Oxford don and Auctor Honoris Causa known as "Lord Gadsby V. Wright",[20] a "grand anglais savant" and tutor to protagonist Anton Voyl, or Vowl; a composition of Voyl's is actually a quotation from Gadsby.[3] In addition to La Disparition's author, aspiring lipogrammatists still point to Gadsby as an inspiration today.[21] A thick work about Marot and linguistic music contains significant parts of Gadsby, for illustration;[22] its author, writing "occasionally lipogrammatically", also now has a thousand-word "autolipography", or lipogrammatic autobiography, put into publication by Stanford.[23] [edit] Footnotes
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