Dr. Oulipo or: How I Learned to Stop Writing with E and Love the Vowel or: Look, Ma, No E’s!
I am again submitting to my longstanding and usually costly bibliophilia. Not at all unhappy about it, I am allowing my intoxicating compulsion to buy almost any book that attracts my fancy to triumph again. I am again laying down my arms in favor of my craving, but paradoxically coinciding with this act of submission is my cocking of an imaginary gun, locking its crosshairs on a book that’s on display in an Amazon.com tab in my Safari application window.
Known in its country of origin as La Disparition, my mark, popularly known as A Void, is an atypical work of fiction by a famous postwar author who will stay anonymous throughout this post so that I may sustain this post’s actual foundation and carry on with its fairly unobvious quirk.
As soon as I found out about this intriguing composition by our so far unknown author, I sort of took an oath that I would own a copy of it, by hook or by crook. Now an opportunity is knocking on my door and trying to add a transaction to my Visa card account. Its Amazon listing is no bargain, but I’m just dying to lay my hands on such a curious and hard-to-find book. Naturally I am glad to succumb. I click on “Buy.”
Now, in wound-up anticipation of its arrival, I am simply bound to adopt a lipogrammatic tactic that mimics that of La Disparition a.k.a. A Void. You may look at this as nothing but pomposity or boastful vanity, but truth is, in composing this consciously lacking and slightly awkward post, I am honoring a book that is without doubt a work of virtuosity.
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posted 12 May 2010
by aldrin - Permalink • Short URL
