All PostsThe lipogram is one of the most commonly cited constraints. Simply stated, a lipogram is a text written without a certain letter (or letters). The difficulty of a lipogram varies depending on which or how many letters are omitted as well as the length of the work. Georges Perec’s famous novel La Disparition is a lipogram in “e” (it omits the letter e completely from the text, except for the author’s name, that is), no easy feat as “e” is the most commonly used letter in the French (and English) languages.
Another rather high profile lipogrammatic work is Christian Bok’s Eunoia. A work in five parts, each part is a lipogram of four vowels (each part is univocalic (using only one vowel)). The first part’s only vowel is “a”, the second’s is “e”, etc.
In his “History of the Lipogram”, Perec traces the the lipogram from the 6th century B.C. — Lasus of Hermione’s poetry without the sigma — to the 20th century — Ernest Vincent Wright’s novel without the letter ‘e’: Gadsby.
It should be noted that regardless of the above examples not all lipograms involve vowels. Philip Terry’s Book of Bachelors in nine parts includes lipograms in e, u, q, m, a, p, c, o, and i. As Terry notes in his afterword, the letters often affected certain fundamental aspects of each part: the lipogram in “i” could not be written in the first person, nor could the one in “o” or “u” be written in the second, and the lipogram in “e” makes the third person much more difficult (of course, the “e” lipogram makes everything more difficult).
There are numerous variations on the lipogram involving systems for which letters are excluded, such as the Oulipian:
Beautiful Outlaw: A poem addressed to someone wherein the letters of the person’s name are excluded one at a time from the lines of the poem (i.e. a poem to me would exclude the d in the first line, the e in the second line, etc.), but all other letters are used at least once (though often letters such as j, x, or z are excepted for inclusion).
Prisoner’s Restriction: All letters that extend above or below the base line are excluded (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, and y), so named because in that way paper can be conserved by writing the lines much closer together (it makes little sense to me).
References:
Bok, Christian. Eunoia. Toronto : Coach House Books, 2001.
Mathews, Harry. Oulipo Compendium. 56, 174-75, 211.
Perec, Georges. “Histoire du lipogramme”. Lipo, 73-89. Trans. as “History of the Lipogram” in Motte, 97-108.
Perec, Georges. A Void (1969). Trans. by Gilbert Adair of La Disparition. London : Harvill Press, 1995.
Terry, Philip. The Book of Bachelors. Special fiction issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction 19.2 (1999).