The Wonderful O, by James Thurber
The wonderful O, by James Thurber
"It's all the vowels except the O," Black said. "I've had a hatred of that letter ever since my mother became wedged in a porthole. We couldn't pull her in and so we had to push her out....I'll issue an edict! All words in books or signs with an O in them shall have the O erased or painted out. We'll print new books and paint new signs without an O in them."
And so the locksmith became a lcksmith, and the bootmaker a btmaker, and people whispered like conspirators when they said the names. Love's Labour's Lost and Mother Goose flattened out like a pricked balloon. Books were bks and Robin Hood was Rbnhd. Little Goody Two Shoes lost her Os and so did Goldilocks, and the former became a whisper and the latter sounded like a key jiggled in a lck.
James Thurber was an icon of the New Yorker in the mid 20th century, both for short stories and cartoons, probably best known for creating Walter Mitty. He also wrote children's books. This one is one of the shortest books on the 1001 list, and, as far as I know, the only kid book. I'm not sure why this one was chosen and not, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Anne of Green Gables.
The Wonderful O gave me a double-take. Rough men who try to abolish the letter O, while they break things and dig holes looking for hidden treasures because they have mommy issues? Really?
Actually, once you get past the premise, it's a fairly harmless adventure story about pirates invading and oppressing the inhabitants of an island. It gets Lewis Carrollian in both linguistic structure and nonsensical plot elements. Because the villains have abolished the letter O, and are haunted by it thereafter, there are long passages where characters talk without using the letter (see my review from January 2014 of George Perec's A Void, in which the whole novel is written with no Es; The Wonderful O is the scale he should have used. It makes for a whimsical story, or a very tedious novel), and other passages where every word has Os. There are categorical lists of, for example, all the jewels with or without Os, and all the body parts that would have to be lopped off, followed by a justification for keeping them by using valid substitute names for them. There is clever wordplay (A woman named Ophelia Oliver has to go into hiding rather than say her name without Os), and so on. Takes under an hour to read, and will give you both child and grownup giggles along the way.
"It's all the vowels except the O," Black said. "I've had a hatred of that letter ever since my mother became wedged in a porthole. We couldn't pull her in and so we had to push her out....I'll issue an edict! All words in books or signs with an O in them shall have the O erased or painted out. We'll print new books and paint new signs without an O in them."
And so the locksmith became a lcksmith, and the bootmaker a btmaker, and people whispered like conspirators when they said the names. Love's Labour's Lost and Mother Goose flattened out like a pricked balloon. Books were bks and Robin Hood was Rbnhd. Little Goody Two Shoes lost her Os and so did Goldilocks, and the former became a whisper and the latter sounded like a key jiggled in a lck.
James Thurber was an icon of the New Yorker in the mid 20th century, both for short stories and cartoons, probably best known for creating Walter Mitty. He also wrote children's books. This one is one of the shortest books on the 1001 list, and, as far as I know, the only kid book. I'm not sure why this one was chosen and not, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Anne of Green Gables.
The Wonderful O gave me a double-take. Rough men who try to abolish the letter O, while they break things and dig holes looking for hidden treasures because they have mommy issues? Really?
Actually, once you get past the premise, it's a fairly harmless adventure story about pirates invading and oppressing the inhabitants of an island. It gets Lewis Carrollian in both linguistic structure and nonsensical plot elements. Because the villains have abolished the letter O, and are haunted by it thereafter, there are long passages where characters talk without using the letter (see my review from January 2014 of George Perec's A Void, in which the whole novel is written with no Es; The Wonderful O is the scale he should have used. It makes for a whimsical story, or a very tedious novel), and other passages where every word has Os. There are categorical lists of, for example, all the jewels with or without Os, and all the body parts that would have to be lopped off, followed by a justification for keeping them by using valid substitute names for them. There is clever wordplay (A woman named Ophelia Oliver has to go into hiding rather than say her name without Os), and so on. Takes under an hour to read, and will give you both child and grownup giggles along the way.