I Read The Longest Lipograms So You Don't Have To (2 of 4)

Mar 26, 2023

Continuing the strangest literary survey you’ll read this year…

Story: A writer struggles to write…anything of substance…with a keyboard that has a broken letter i.
Lipogram: No I.
Why a Lipogram?: Hey, if the keyboard’s broken, it’s broken!
My Take: Writing can be a struggle. But it’s not always easy to make that struggle relatable, even to readers who are writers themselves. A story that sounds too much like “Oh, poor me, it’s such torture to sit in my room making up stuff” usually has an uphill climb to gain my sympathies.
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Still, as writer-versus-the-blank-page stories go, this one gets some fresh energy from its gimmick. Shields is clearly writing about herself, but she can’t use the first-person pronoun to do it.
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Absence doesn’t overstay its welcome: it’s the shortest work on this list. Its overall idea and theme would be incorporated into the longer lipogram Eunoia. You can read the whole thing for yourself at this link.

Story: Scott tells of his travels in New Zealand.
Lipogram: No E. Also, it rhymes.
Why a Lipogram?: I really couldn’t tell you.
My Take: It’s intriguing! I’m so unfamiliar with the subject matter that I feel like twenty-six letters wouldn’t suffice to describe it. “Long White Cloudland” is a common nickname for New Zealand.
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The rhyming structure is weirdly compelling—this is the only major lipogram that even tries one. Awkwardness does peek through now and then (as in “took caring” below), but not as often as you’d expect.

Story: A grim sketch of life in a mental institution. Ms. Luthior was once a violist prodigy: now she struggles just to hold on to her cherished instrument.
Lipogram: No E, and the story mimics the structure of a sonata.
Why a Lipogram?: Constrained language does a good job of showing Luthior’s constrained reality.
My Take: This is a damn dark downer, but sometimes that’s what I’m in the mood for. And at 26-29 pages, it goes on just long enough to hit its mark.