L-M-N-O-P

So, I'm reading a most creative and fascinating book. It's called Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable, written by Mark Dunn. (And if there are certain words in the subtitle that leave you scratching your head, I'm going to make you do what I did: go look them up.)

From amazon.com:

The story takes place in the present day on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina, where over a century earlier, the great Nevin Nollop invented a 35-letter pangram (a phrase, sentence or verse containing every letter in the alphabet). As the creator of "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," Nollop was deified for his achievement. The island's inhabitants live an anachronistic existence, with letter-writing remaining the principal form of communication. Life seems almost utopian in its simplicity until letters of the alphabet start falling from the inscription on the statue erected in Nollop's honor, and the island's governing council decrees that as each letter falls, it must be extirpated from both spoken and written language. Forced to choose from a gradually shrinking pool of words, the novel's protagonists a family of islanders seek ways to communicate without employing the forbidden letters. A band of intrepid islanders forms an underground resistance movement; their goal is to create a shorter pangram than Nollop's original, thereby rescinding the council's draconian diktat. The entire novel consists of their letters to each other, and the messages grow progressively quirkier and more inventive as alternative spellings ("yesters" for "yesterday") and word clusters ("yellow sphere" for "sun") come to dominate the language. Dunn obviously relishes the challenge of telling a story with a contracting alphabet. Though frequently choppy and bizarre, the content of the letters can easily be deciphered, a neat trick that elicits smiles. Wordsmiths of every stripe will appreciate this whimsical fable, in which Dunn brilliantly demonstrates his ability to delight and captivate.

Like most of you, I've never stopped to wonder what would happen if suddenly certain letters of the alphabet were banished from use. But after reading the first 50 pages, I've come to realize that it would be pretty traumatic. First of all, not only would you not be able to speak or write words using the forbidden letters, but all books which use them (i.e. all books period) would have to be destroyed. That's pretty sad.

The first letter to go is Z. Like perhaps many of you, my first thought was, "Oh, Z, we could survive without the letter Z." But I quickly came to realize that without the letter Z, we'd lose such words as "realize," for one, as well as breeze, zipper, zoo, squeeze, and bizarre. I don't think I could part with those words. And if I couldn't live without the letter Z, I also probably couldn't live without the letters X or Q either, because then I wouldn't be able to exit off the freeway and I couldn't tell my bass-loving neighbors to be quiet.

Anyway, it's something to think about. I guess. If you like to think about these sorts of things. Which you might. Because language is cool like that. So go check it out from your library.

And speaking of checking out peas, tomorrow is The Ultrasound. At last! In less than 24 hours, I will be sitting in the perinatal center checking out the little sweet pea growing inside me. I'm so So SO excited. (Did I mention I was excited? Because I am. Really.) If this center is as technologically advanced as they claim to be, I will hopefully have digital pictures to share with you all, so if you're one for images of tiny transparent people, stay tuned.