Novela escrita bajo formato de lipograma por el escritor francés Georges Perec, miembro del grupo de experimentación literaria Oulipo, El secuestro (La disaparition), publicada en 1969, conlleva toda una experiencia lectora al inmiscuirse en el misterio que encierra su forma y fondo.

Valiéndose de la novela policial al estilo Christie, influenciada por las historias de sagas familiares y saturada de referencias intertextuales y metatextuales, El secuestro narra la historia de la búsqueda incesante que inician los amigos y cercanos del desaparecido Tonio Vocel, los que, conmocionados, rastrean las pruebas y pistas que les permiten paulatinamente componer un enrevesado rompecabezas compuesto por maldiciones, señales, omisiones y muertes que a medida que es completado y comienza a entregar las primeras respuestas de la desaparición que dispara la trama del libro, provoca catástrofes similares en los mismos que buscan la verdad.

Un libro que interpela al lector(a) a desentrañar básicamente dos misterios: La desaparición de Vocel, pero quizás más importante, a descubrir la verdad tras el enigma de la composición del libro y a cuestionarse el extrañamiento que probablemente le ocasione un libro como lo es El secuestro de Perec. (Por supuesto, lo anterior cobra relevancia si es que no se ha leído la sinopsis del libro o nunca se ha escuchado de la originalidad que lo hace famoso)

Agotador y exhaustivo, El secuestro da muestra de la increíble capacidad de imaginación y estudio de un autor fascinado por los juegos verbales y lingüísticos. Se releva la titánica tarea de traducción emprendida en 1986 y finalizada en 1997, por los traductores de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.

It took me a few times to actually get into this novel. while i knew it was missing "e"s i still felt the need to make SURE that there REALLY weren't any for the first couple of pages, the first couple of times i tried. i picked it up again in law school, when i could no longer concentrate on any detail, and found that i loved the book for the mystery story it told. i am one lazy human being, but perec references other cultural events, art, literature, etc to supplement descriptive words that would require the use of the missing vowel (though sometimes he just gets rid of them-the main character is Anton Vowl) and i would actually get off my ass to look them up so that i got a fuller picture of the story he was telling.

even madame bovary didn't make me lament the fact that i couldn't read the french original the way that this book did. damned ignorant american that i am, i was only able to enjoy it in english, but i can imagine that anyone who could enjoy both versions would get double the pleasure and double the fun.

Perhaps this book was filled with too much genius for me. Or perhaps it's because I kept getting distracted by the fact that this book does not contain the letter "e" anywhere within it. But, on the whole, this book wasn't able to really capture my imagination.

Anton Vowl goes missing, and it is up to his friends and a pair of investigators to find him. In the course of looking for him, they discover that other people have died/gone missing in the course of a few months, and a full-on investigation is underway.

The third part of the novel was what really bogged my down in reading this: Augustus' tale, while very important to the storyline, seemed excessively long for no other reason than to prove that Perec could write a 400 page novel without the letter "e" (in the Afterword, also devoid of "e"s, Perec admits that he wrote this novel in response to a friend's challenge, who claimed writing without an "e" to be impossible).

Accolades to Perec for avoiding the "e", but this mystery was not for me.

4.5 stars

"Vowl is missing!"

That’s corr ct: Anton Vowl, protagonist, nds up missing at on point. But pl nty of oth r vow ls ar missing as w ll, s ing as ‘A Void’ is an incr dibl lipogram in ‘ ‘. Not only did G org s P r c, whos first and last nam contain two 's, writ th ntir nov l in his nativ Fr nch without th ir l tt r ‘ ‘, but th translator Gilb rt Adair, h of only on ‘ ‘ in his nam , has translat d it without ‘ ‘'s into nglish, a languag so rif and rich with ‘ ‘'s that it b gins with th l tt r(and capitaliz d to boot). Th last nam -- whil it wholly incapsulat s th conc it on many l v ls -- is actually among the l ast impr ssiv sl ights of hand in ‘A Void.’

"such a work of fiction could not allow a solitary lazy or random or fortuitous word, no approximation, no padding and no nodding; that, contrarily, its author has rigorously to sift all his words -- I say, all, from nouns down to lowly conjunctions -- as if totally bound by a rigid, cast-iron law!"

Said law gov rns th compl xly plott d book; that it can b r ad in at l ast two languag s without th common st l tt r d ploy d is a r markabl f at ind d. Asid from th xhibitionistic goal of the nov l, it's a hilarious r ad. Th l ngths P r c go s to avoid (A Void) th l tt r ‘ ‘ is at tim s hilariously absurd. Th fact is allud d to through m taphors, plot points, and asid s throughout the nov l.

"a truly amazing gift for linguistic obfuscation and would turn an innocuous communication into such hocus pocus that nobody could follow it"

But p rhaps th crazyi st thing is that th book is pr tty asy to follow, hocus pocus or not. It’s said -- wh th r tru or not -- that P r c wrot th book aft r a companion call d his bluff on b ing abl to writ in such a r strictiv way. P r c said it b cam “a spur to [his] imagination” furth r saying it “took [his] imagination down so many intriguing linguistic highways and byways”

"A void. Void of whom? Of what?"

I finish d th book, and found that n arly vry cr ativ m thod of rvi wing it s ms to hav alr ady b n us d. So I found anoth r way to do it, although it will sur ly b much mor difficult to r ad. As far as I am awar , it hasn’t b n don y t.

P r c imagin s th lik ly r ad r “rapt in a book, a work of fiction, constantly hoping for a solution, for a solution that’s driving him crazy by lurking just out of his grasp, a solution that has had throughout, in fact from its first word, an infuriating habit of staring at him whilst continually avoiding his own scrutiny, might find, advancing into its story, nothing but ambiguous mystification and rationalisation, obscurantism and obfuscation, all of it consigning to a dim and murky chiaroscuro that ambition, so to say, that lit its author’s lamp.”

Now, P r c did not writ his nov l in th Fr nch or hav it translat d by Adair in th way I hav pr s nt d this r vi w, with th simpl omission of th l tt r ‘ ‘, ss ntially cr ating a gap, or -- pun incr dibly int nd d -- a void. Rath r than cr ating a void, so obvious as I hav , ‘A Void’ tak s th circuitous road: h avoids th ‘ ‘ ntir ly; ind d, th ‘ ‘ is not a void at all but something ntir ly in xist nt. My choic with r sp ct to th r moval is simpl : I hav writt n my r vi w’s words as I wrot th m, th n d l t d th ‘ ‘s to show how oft n th y ar us d in normal s ttings. Th italiciz d portions ar quot s from th nov l, which r ad unimp d d by th r straint I’v appli d to my own words. This partially displays P r c’s g nius. Although th r straint would s m to limit his ability of conv ying a point and a comp lling story, h st ps up to th plat and d liv rs to th xt nt that it s ms ffortl ss. You grow to lov and hat him for th sam r ason: h shouldn’t hav b n abl to do what h did to th xt nt that h did it with th clarity of his vision and narrativ so cog ntly forg d. Lik Kany said, “No on man should hav all that pow r.”

When I first heard of Georges Perec's "A Void", a book written entirely without the letter "e," I knew I had to read it. The fact that it was translated into English from French, again without the letter "e" is also something of a triumph. Occasionally that makes for awkward sentence construction, but the book is incredibly readable for the most part.

The story follows the disappearance of A. Vowl as his friends
attempt to follow the clues and figure out what happened to him.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book, but felt that it got less interesting as it went on. The book cleverly winks at itself a lot. Ideally, it should be read without the knowledge about what is missing from the book, but even the cover explains the whole premise. I doubt many read this book today without knowing everything in advance.

Anyway, it's an interesting idea for a book, cleverly done.

This is one of the most difficult and most genius books I have ever read.

The entire novel was written without the letter ‘e’. Originally in French, the translation to Dutch I believe was very good and very well thought. I am glad there was some explanation because there are so many levels in the book, story wise and language wise.

I hope that one day my French will good enough to read the original.

Holy lipogram, Batman!

A Void - French author Georges Perec's 400-page novel where a bunch of buddies search for their missing chum Anton Vowl, an adventure yarn parodying genres like crime noir and Gothic horror, all with a variety of spins on style and wordplay - verbal monkeyshines, linguistic antics, quizzical phonetic pranks, rhetorical roguery.

Will the steadfast searchers smoke out the missing symbol needed to conclude their search? Who knows? But to add a pinch of piquancy, such stealth might be hazardous, even life-threatening.

And, oh, yes - Georges Perec took up Raymond Queneau and Group Oulipo's challenge to experiment with constrained writing techniques, in this case, writing an entire novel without once using the letter E. I recall the shock on the face of the librarian at my local library when I told her about the verbal void in A Void.

As by way of example of what a reader is in store for, here's a short paragraph from the first section of the book:

"Vowl turns off his radio, sits down on a rug in his living room, starts inhaling lustily and trying to do push-ups, but is atrociously out of form and all too soon, his back curving, his chin jutting out, curls up in a ball, and, staring raptly at his Aubusson, succumbs to a fascination with a labyrinth of curious and transitory motifs that swim into his vision and vanish again."

I read A Vod some years ago and I just did revisit the novel. Same akimbo experience. After a page or two, I had the feeling my mind was listing at a 45 degree angle. Oh, yes, both times I had the distinct impression the E-less sentences were messing with my neurology - but in a good, creative way.

For me, such offbeat Oulipo oddness demands a sharp slant for sharing the flavor of Georges Perec's highly original work.

So, let's take a look at the first short paragraph of The Bathroom by the contemporary Belgian author Jean-Philippe Toussaint:

1. When I began to spend my afternoons in the bathroom I had no intention of moving into it; no, I would pass some pleasant hours there, meditating in the bathtub, sometimes dressed, other times naked. Edmondsson, who liked to be there with me, said it made me calmer: occasionally I would even say something funny, we would laugh. I would wave my arms as I spoke, explaining that the most practical bathtubs were those with parallel sides, a sloping back, and a straight front, which relieves the user of the need for a footrest.

Here goes for my E-less Bathtub transposition:

1. Whilst I did start to put in my hours from noon to four p.m. in the bathtub I had no aim of moving into it; no, I would pass gratifying bits of day in the bathtub, ruminating, occasionally with shirt and pants, occasionally stark-ass. My gal, who would fancy joining in, said it would prompt my spirit into calm: occasionally I would blurt out funny stuff, gal and I would laugh, I would flap my arms as I took a stab at a bit of chat, clarifying that most practical bathtubs crop up with uniform points both ways, a sloping back, and a upright, straight front, which will allay the man or gal of a wish for a stool or ottoman.

I would strongly recommend you take a short paragraph from your favorite novel and try your hand at rewriting without once using the letter E. So doing, you'll have a deeper appreciation for what it must have been like for Georges Perec to write his novel, and, likewise, for Gilbert Adair to translate the French into English. Remarkable plus ten.

Up for a singular artistic whoop? A Void will work its tricky magic.

Did I really write the above two sentences without an E? Infectious.


French author Georges Perec, 1936-1982