i read the tiktok viral book that NEVER uses the letter E

so I saw someone online talking about the fact that they had written a whole book a whole novel without once using the letter e and straight away my mind was whizzing because so many words include the letter e I mean he she they the how are you going to write a book without using any of those words how are you going to write a whole book without using the letter e well obviously you know me I had to get myself a copy of it like before I even had had a conscious thought I was ordering a copy of this book for myself and so it's called roundabout which the eagle-eyed viewers of you will notice does not include the letter e that is a word that does not use the letter e in it but slight issue is that the author's name is Fong Gan and that word does in fact feature the letter e but on the cover it's redacted it's like grayed out so I'm kind of intrigued like are the words just not going to include the letter e like will it just instead of the would it just be th instead of them would it just be THM do you see what I mean or is he just going to exclusively even the word exclusively has multiple es in it is he just going to exclusively use words that don't include the letter e I'm not sure I'm going to find out and I thought it would be a fun video to check this out you know I haven't done a reading Vlog in a while and I kind of missed doing them also I think that my outfit today is very much giving Tom Nook like respectfully why does it look like I'm going to tell you the trading prices of turnips on the island today except Tom Nook is a crook all Tom Nook wants is your money I just want you to sit and read a book with me by the way the cardigan is from a brand called story MFG you see it says story on the sleeve I I'm always on brand wait oh my God I have to show you the T-shirt too this is from Bodie and look it has his little dog on It come on now that is sweet anyway there's an OOTD and if you're choosing not to dress like a character from Animal Crossing my two questions for you are number one why not and number two why do you hate fun so I'm going to be reading roundabout today and I thought it' be fun to share this with you and read it together so I'm intrigued by this book I'm as intrigued by it as I am afraid of it oh sorry about that this is the description on the back so ID dullin I've noticed straight away the character's name does not feature the letter e that's probably going to be quite useful and I'm thinking instead of saying he using like um pronouns it can just always refer to characters by their first names which of course the author will choose to not include the letter e so ID is this character's name ID dullin works as an assistant account for a multinational corporation and is supporting a family of four but abruptly on his 49th birthday Ovid runs away from his daily work and his loving family to go on a road trip struck by inspiration ID knows that an author is writing about him and will do anything to avoid acting as a protagonist of a book This is So Meta but his author will not abandon his Pursuit and vows to punish of it his Wayward protagonist that's nuts and you know I've just noticed even the description doesn't use the letter E the blur does not include the letter e there's a review underneath which does include the letter e because of course that's written by someone else but the blur itself didn't feature the letter e one time so that means that the letter e isn't only redacted it's not even present at all I'm wondering what the significance of that will be like will that be the big plot twist of this book and how interesting that it's kind of about someone becoming cognizant of the fact that they are the main character of a book like they are aware a novel is being written about them it's a bit Truman Show Vibes which is exciting to me because The Truman Show is my favorite movie so um okay let's get reading by the way do you love or hate the colorcoded bookshelves let me know if I'm being honest with you this is all I've ever wanted from my life come on like an old library this lamp and specifically that sound is the primary source of my serotonin okay so let's see oh it has pictures I love when an adult book has pictures is let's see see is a word we're not going to see for a while because that has two e okay even the epigraph doesn't have the letter e boys throw rocks at frogs in sport but frogs do not Croak in sport but with passion that is a Bion quote and does not include the letter e at all now all I can think about is how long did it take him to find an epigraph that doesn't use the letter e like this book is going to become my Roman Empire first part oh he couldn't use the word chapter he couldn't say chapter one because chapter has an e in it h H wow that really is tough so first part Aid dullin was a promising child who would always stay a promising child a prodigy grown old and sad grow as ID might with him it was always a similar thing in dissimilar proportion as a truck gradually grows in sound on its approach as a child in London ID would sit for hours and do drawings of cowboys worthy of a postcard as a man living in Wisconsin ID would throw away his Sundays painting portraits of British politicians both wig and Tor if in his childhood oid would play mini golf at an occasional birthday party in his adulthood o took up golf as a way of blowing off work practicing piano at 4 was now playing piano skillfully but with no soul at almost 50 okay so this is a book that is going to use only words that don't have the letter e it's not even that the E is just redacted it's just not present in the slightest the letter e is missing an action here is the first page just if you wanted to see it the letter e has been missing for longer than Kate Middleton at this point is anyone else caught on that side of Twitter by the way basically if you're not chronically online like myself there is this whole conspiracy theory about the fact that Kate Middleton has been missing or at least hasn't been seen in public for 2 months and so the theories are is she recovering from a BBL is she just growing out her Fringe like did she get a bad haircut that she needs to hide cuz we've all been there I feel you Kate this time last year I was in the TR wrenches is she going into the Big Brother house like we just don't know where is Kate Middleton and normally I don't really care that much about the royal family but last night did I get sucked into a rabbit hole of where is Kate Middleton yes I did yes I did and now the question is where is the letter e and is that going to be a big plot twist in this book that like the letter e gets brought back or something why does the author not use the letter e I'm still intrigued by the reasoning so I'm going to read the first chapter and then I will or the first part because chapter of course has the letter in it and I will let you know what I think something I missed the first time I opened the book but I've noticed now is that on the inside of the book it says roundabout an improvisational fiction by Fong it doesn't include his surname so as of the moment you open the cover we no longer have the letter e although there is a sneaky one just there that would be really committing to the bit to even go with a publisher that doesn't use letter e but that's pretty tough when the word press has an e and I'm realizing it's called an improvisational fiction cuz they can't call it a novel because the word novel has an e in it this is insane they couldn't even use the word insane it's this is nuts I'm sitting here reading this book and all I can think about is the fact that this man must have had the thesaurus open the thesaurus must have been open at all times like I just wonder how many times he Googled another word for for example he's trying to listen at a door and so instead of putting his ear or his head up against it he has to put his Cranium against it because of course that word doesn't have an there's some things I keep finding funny for example the fact that he was born on April 1st because of course the words first and April don't require the letter e you know he could only have been born in some months of the year he could only have been born in March April May and July and August because every other month includes the letter e so I guess we're kind of limited in what months this book can take place in unless he says like it was the month after August maybe when it gets to know November he'll have to be like 3 months had passed since August his children are called Aaron and Alyssa he drives a Toyota he has a wife called Anna but she has to be referred to as his Ms because of course the word wife has an e in it this is easia this puts the e in eraser so far I'm terrified and impressed about what this man is capable of I also realized that his surname is Vietnamese and it's actually pronounced nin so I'm sorry that I mispronounced that before but yeah and of course he lived in Britain not England or the United Kingdom and he also lived in India Thailand and Hong Kong he went to Harvard none of these words feature the letter e I do love that we get a picture at the beginning of each chapter it's like a reward I've also realized that the author won't be able to use the past participle of most verbs because they would end in ed as in like the past tense of most verbs ends in Ed God this is actually so tough I do not envy him having to try and make this work but he is doing a pretty a good job I have I have to give it to him oh my God I predicted this so there's a section where he wants to describe the month of February but of course he can't say February so instead he has to say for a short month you know which month I'm talking about that particularly short month following January and prior to March that's one way around it I guess so I made it to part three and I started to investigate what this phenomenon is so basically this is called a lipogram and a lipogram is a composition from which the writer systematically omits a certain letter or certain letters of the alphabet and it's a really interesting experimental thing in fact in an episode of How I Met Your Mother there's a scene where Lily and Robin challenge their friend Barney to try and get our girl's phone number while only wearing a trash bag and not using the letter e sh okay don't use the letter e don't use the letter e [Music] hey damn it hi my word for this guy is bar no do you want just go back to my place yes Dam and it turns out that e is actually the most commonly used letter in the English language and not only the English language also French German Spanish Italian Swedish Danish and Dutch and Fong Nan is not the first person to do this in a novel form written in 1939 Ernest Vincent writes gadsby is a 50,000-word novel and there's not an e in sight if there are abbreviations used there are only ones that still would not contain the letter e if written out in full in order to make sure he didn't accidentally cheat wri reportedly tied down the letter e on his typewriter how interesting is that and then inspired by Gatsby a French writer called jeorge pek decided to write his own novel without the letter e this time it was written in French this was published in 1969 it was called LA disp and was later translated into English in 1994 and they still managed to emit all of the ease that is crazy cuz one of the first things I thought of was well this could never be translated because how could you stay how could you stay true to the novel whilst not only translating it into another language but also not being able to use any letter E in that language as well so it was translated by a guy called Gilbert Adair who had to rename it a void because the direct translation would have been the dis appearance which of course features the letter E in fact it has three examples of the letter e that's triple homicide this one is spinning me out because I'm realizing that it's called aoid but he also had to avoid the letter e just on so many layers this is crazy has since been translated into many languages in the same lipogrammatic form including German Italian Dutch Swedish Spanish Turkish Romanian and even Japanese how insane is that so so this is another example of a book like that and so interesting that it kind of has this history I'm still waiting to find out what the reason for choosing this was but maybe I now have two other books that I'm going to need to read as well because these are so interesting okay no one panick but the lipogram has been referenced so ID's friend writes lipogram so he says what's a lipogram also there's no way this wasn't intentional so what's a lipogram ID said quickly just to fill a void as in the name of the lipogram the famous lipogram you your words by emitting particular symbols such as A B C or D from a work smart I see what you did there and then just to show off he starts writing lipogram within the lipogram I also just want to let you know that today's video is very very kindly brought to you by Squarespace now Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building a website or an online brand and the best news is you don't need to be good at coding you don't need to be an expert web developer this can be your first rodeo because Squarespace has literally hundreds of incredible templates which you can use as the perfect starting point to bounce off of adapt customize and make something that you're really proud of and that really reflects your business there are also loads of really cool tools for example you can set up a Blog there's an option to create an email sign up and also Squarespace has incredible analytical tools so you can see what people are enjoying what people are clicking on and therefore what you should make more of so if this all sounds good you can actually get a free trial over at squarespace.com and then when you're ready to launch your beautiful new website you can use the code Jack Edwards squarespace.com from /j Edwards to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain you are welcome thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring this video and yet another example of speaking around the letter e instead of saying this character is from Greece he says he's an immigrant from Olympic country I did think maybe we were about to catch the author out because the first section is called first part so then surely the second section would be called second part which of course has an e in the word second but he thought of that and so this section is called part two but then what happens when we get to part seven because seventh part and part seven would both have ease in them so we have fifth part maybe he'll just do the number we have part six oh and then he just does book two and we go back to first part again I see I see what he did there damn why did I think I could catch him out the characters are starting to acknowledge or speculate that there might be someone watching them so he says I'm finding it hard to function just thinking about an anonymous man or woman watching us that's me that's me I'm watching you wow love really isn't dead though ID had long found comfort in knowing that many fish swam in the social pond in Anna Ovid had found his OV and was now not happy dining on anything but caviar if someone said that about me I would propose on the spot so I am going to go out do you know the irony the great irony of me wearing this cardigan that says sun poed on it when it is literally pouring with rain but I'm going to go out to a coffee shop there's this little place called Martha's Bakery in Williamsburg and it's a good place for kind of like co-working but I feel like I'm getting a bit like cabin feverish um so I'm going to take my book I'm going to go to the bakery get a little sweet treat cuz I've done a tiny bit of work so therefore I deserve to treat myself and I'll take you with me by the way do you like my little poster on my wall it says keep dancing do not stop also I've just found out there is another book called elino p and in elino P it's basically a book about an island that slowly starts to lose the alphabet so each letter of the alphabet drops off one by one and so the text reflects that and is written without using those letters of the alphabet until there are only five left and apparently it's incredible so maybe I need to do a part two to this I don't know this is a phenomenon I didn't even know existed but apparently is quite a big deal it's kind of hurting my brain a little bit I'm not going to lie like even the prospect I'm like how do you do that but I also have like fomo and I need to read these books and I also want to try it so I don't know anyway let's go to the coffee shop I went to Martha's Bakery I made a real dent in this book I finally got some progress going and then after that I went to a place called supper which is a restaurant in the East Village I went with my friends Mina and Peter and Elena here they are had a very nice time had my main character moment in the car on the way home and now it is the next day and I'm still working my way through roundabout by Fong Nan this book is frying my brain a little bit like it is just in insane we'll get to that but when I woke up this morning I got ready and headed to the library I always find that the library is a good place for me to really focus and get stuck into something really sink my teeth into it and we're so lucky to have such incredible public libraries so I've been working my way through this book and actually the main thing I focused on when I first got to the library was trying to work out the anagram in this book with the character's name because his name is ID dullin and at one point in the first kind of 25 Pages maybe uh the author says that the author's name is an anagram for something thing and I am a loser I am a nerd and I just love anagrams so I made it my personal mission to solve the anagram in this book and I think I might have done it I basically got stuck for ages and ages on the fact that well firstly I thought the anagram was villain but then I realized there's only one ey in ID's name so it couldn't be villain without repeating a letter and then the thing that really stumped me for ages and ages and kind of threw me off track was the fact that I worked out that you could make the words a void from ID dull's name which of course as I spoke about earlier is the English translation of the title of George pek's book The Original um lipogram or one of the original lips anyway that stumped me for ages cuz I could not get that out of my head that a void would be somewhere in the anagram but I think actually I've realized it's null and void or void and null um you can make that it's a perfect anagram so I think that that is the anagram I think but I still don't really understand the significance of that or what it's going to mean so maybe that's going to be a big plot twist maybe that's going to be a plot point I don't know but I'm pretty chuffed that I worked it out especially because one I'm hung over and two I even tried at one point chat GPT to see if chat GPT could work it out this is when I was so stuck in the trenches of thinking it was something a void and chat GPT it turns out is terrible at anagrams like absolute dog genuinely like that I would have thought that it was something that a computer would be good at like doing an anagram that seems like something a computer would easily be able to do cuz it's just a sequence or resequencing something but it turns out it's a real weak spot in AI like they cannot do anagrams you know my ego is through the roof right now that I outsmarted the computer that chat GPT couldn't get it and I did with this little PE brain my one brain cell this morning was locked and loaded and I and I worked that out and anyway I've read another 100 pages so I'm I wanted to talk to you about them cuz this book is actually insane it's weird because at first when I first started reading it yesterday I felt like I could tell that something was missing like just subconsciously in my brain I know that I did know and I wonder how long it would have taken me to notice that there were no ease in this book if I hadn't been told explicitly beforehand cuz honestly the writing style is pretty smooth you you really don't notice it that much like now at the point that I'm at now I I'm not even noticing at all that there are no ease except for when the author deliberately mentions it because there are times when he kind of makes a joke about the fact that there are no ease in the book but at first when I first started reading it it just felt like something was not quite right like was something inherently wrong you know kind of like when you're watching an episode of Riverdale that you know that there's something fundamentally wrong with what you're watching you just can't put your finger on what exactly it is I think that's how I felt when I first started reading this book I was like something is not right I feel a little uncomfortable and I can't put my finger on why but now I'm a certain point in I'm really not thinking about the fact there are no e like I'm you kind of get used to it which is weird and I reached the point where Avid starts to become aware of the fact that someone is writing his story he says ID was conscious now of an author writing out his history animating his body and guiding his actions so it's becoming kind of increasingly meta and basically the story is that ID has decided to run away from his life but his daughter who comes out to him as transgender decides to come with him too and this is what I mean by the author being playful about the fact he's not using the letter e so he says this is my daugh or actually my son that I'm talking about he was so close to using the letter e here's another example of a play on words to avoid using the letter e he says Maia villain instead of Makia vellan which would need to use the letter e so here he says Aid did not want an author capturing all his actions his idiosyncratic way of talking his ticks his faux PA his poor dialogue Alyssa had run away to avoid a watchful sibling just as ID had run away to avoid his watchful author and then the author starts to contemplate killing off ID as a character so he says ovid's author sits at his laptop and thinks about indulging this whim of burning Ovid of cutting him in two but as long as Ovid is still his protagonist this is not an option his only solution is to annoy ID in small ways such as causing his car to run out of gas only 50 yards from a gas station so the Ovid has to go out and push his Toyota for a block or two or changing highway signs to throw him off track putting him onto a roundabout there's always a great moment when the title of the book is acknowledged within the text it's like a reward that's always a good moment anyway or changing highway signs to throw him off track putting him onto a roundabout a rotary always circling switching back trying to turn but failing flailing falling short of his goal so I think that's where the title comes from this idea that the author is in control and the character is just constantly in this cycle you know the exits he can take have been predetermined pred decided for him he has the illusion of agency but actually doesn't you know actually doesn't really have agency at all though he is becoming aware of the fact that someone is writing his life which is a very interesting concept for a book I think but it's also kind of like a double on tandre because so it has a double meaning because the author has to go about telling the story in a roundabout way like sometimes he has to go around what he really wants to say in order to explain it to you so there's layers it's like an onion there are layers this book went to the Phoebe wallbridge School of the fourth wall just not existing naturally you know by now who of its author is and that I am it and the Ovid is a victim of a malicious mind busy plotting his undoing as ID's author I am not just an obnoxious thorn in his foot I am villainous a wrathful god wishing harm upon Adam and Abraham willing to kill his own firstborn son and then it gets crazier because ID is missing the character goes missing from the author I'm sitting at my laptop staring into my monitor how well I was talking to you clarifying things going on and on about my war with ID on Hiatus from narrating his day in all its minutia our protagonist ran away again taking his son with him so Ovid the character is now missing and the author is trying to find him on his referencing where he's trying to find ofid he has AB C D and I guess e is kind of this mysterious realm outside of the author's knowledge also this diagram of the states I wonder if the states that are missing are the states that include the letter e wait oh my God okay yes I found a map the state directly south of Colorado in that diagram is blocked out that's New Mexico Texas also is absent Nebraska is absent only the states that don't use the letter E in their name are featured on that map so anything to do with the letter e is a blind spot for the author and that is how ID has escaped crazy he put the E and escaped it's genuinely one of the most insane things and unhinged things I've ever read and I'm really enjoying it I have to say Okay update I think we found the point where where the letter e has its significance so this is how ID distinguishes himself as separate from his author because ID has access to the letter e ID's Journal is utilizing an unfamiliar signal which looks similar to an F lying on top of an L his book is full of this symbol as though it was as common a thing as a or as I or as o this is how ID avoids my authorial Spotlight I'm thinking that the significance of the letter e is basically meant to mean that we're constantly aware of the process of creating and of being written and the presence of the author because of the absence of the letter e we become aware of the presence of the author who is orchestrating that absence does that make sense like because it's so intentional that something is missing it makes us think about what is actually there and that is the author you know some books I think you're meant to read and just totally forget that there is an author like you just feel like a character is speaking directly to you especially books that are written in the first person whereas in roundabout we are constantly aware that this is a construction that there is someone who is like the Puppet Master controlling everything that's happening and that is the author and so I think because this is meant to be very meta and Aid is going to become aware of the author the lack of e constantly reminds us as the reader that this is a construction of some description so I think it's really interesting and it actually really works okay so randomly the next part of the book is designed as a play and basically ID has been found and been put on trial and this is basically telling the story of him being on trial it's the whole thing is so bizarre I will say it definitely keeps you on your toes cuz you genuinely have no idea what is about to happen next I think this quote here is significant in terms of The Craft of writing this particular book avoiding words is our only way of writing with any originality so I guess that must be the author's kind of mentality when writing this book in the lipogram style because of course so many words have had to be avoided speaking of which ID avoid avoid why is it always avoid void with you what is it that you want to avoid I got it I knew it the anagram is in fact null and void I am buzzing with that and I also have just found out who the author is but I feel like I don't want to give absolutely everything away in case any of you do you want to go and read this so I'm not going to tell you who the author is but it was a fun twist and the character who is the author also starts to become aware of the actual author Fong nin so it's like just stacked and stacked and stacked on top of each other of just this mindboggling n also you'll notice there's a Ouija board mentioned and it's missing one particular letter oh and also here at the end of goodbye I think that the E kind of represents this realm outside of the author's control it's very self-deprecating to about the art of writing he says writing fiction making up a world and populating it with conflict and immorality is a symptom of a sick ungodly mind and actually it often refers to the writer of this book as some kind of God who is controlling the narrative and What's happen happening Like It Is Just So Meta this is more meta than Facebook and Instagram combined and just when I thought we'd reach the point where this couldn't get more insane now the reader is a character in the book too so ID's wife basically gets assassinated and as the reader you just obviously read it and you can't do anything about it the author starts speaking directly to the reader and says watching is tent amount to doing by watching Anna's assassination and doing nothing to stop it it is as though you took the gun and shot Anna with your own hand so now he basically is blaming the reader for the things that are happening he says you are my co-conspirator you are my complicit spy and collaborator you ow my soul my own Alibi and ID's downfall and ruination so basically now it's now it's our fault now it's my problem I guess I got to the end of the book and we basically end up with ID returning to the womb and going back in time to the beginning of the story which means that the story in itself is cyclical is circular is round is roundabout because we complete the loop by ending in the same place we started so the cycle begins again oh my God this is taking years off my life with the amount of brain power it's taking to consume this but it is really really smart that was this was honestly really fun to read are lipogram supposed to be this stressful is it me or in this final diagram does he kind of resemble a letter e so in conclusion I would give this a solid like 4.25 stars out of five it was really fun to read as a reading experience five out of five loads of fun cultural and literary references the author is very playful he has a really fun time with the fact that he's not using the letter e like it's constantly joked about and he speaks around it just I think constantly making it clear that this is all everything you're seeing is so intentional and he's always so in control of everything you're consuming I do think at times it's a little Superfluous like there are scenes that are a little longer than they need to be but it's such an achievement it's so fun as a reading experience so I this was a little Adventure I learned about lips thank you for watching this video I hope that you enjoyed it and this has left me with much to think about let me know if there are any other books like this that you think I should read and all the best stay in TCH have a wonderful day and I'll catch you very soon bye-bye

Channel: Jack Edwards

Views: 374,253

Keywords: booktok viral, booktok, viral, booktube, lipogram, book written without letter E, letter e, reading vlog, reader, jack edwards

Id: aUBUnJHsytI

Length: 29min 24sec (1764 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024