By Nayla Baraki
Special to The Daily Star
Saturday, February 14, 2009
BEIRUT: If you've ever struggled to write a sentence without using the letter "e," you will probably be impressed with a new book written by a Lebanese writer: "Jack and Mary," a 109-page novel, is free of "e," the most commonly used letter in the English language.
That means no "the," either.
The author, Joseph Habib Helou, was born in Jezzine and holds a doctorate of philosophy in English literature from Commonwealth University in England. He started teaching English while still at high school and is now a university instructor and lecturer at the American University College of Science and Technology (AUST) and at the Lebanese American University (LAU), where he teaches business English, translation and English language.
"Jack and Mary" follows Helou's earlier book, "Kahlil Gibran, a Nonpareil Artist," an analytical study of the renowned author's writings and paintings.
The idea for Helou's latest book "started with a challenge among a couple of teachers who were just chatting and agreeing that writing something without the letter 'e' in English is rather impossible," he told The Daily Star.
"The letter 'e' is the most used letter in English, and the definite article, 'the', is the most used word in spoken and written language," he explained.
"I accepted the challenge and said I would give it a try. My colleagues took it as more of a joke than a serious challenge. I wanted to prove that I could achieve in English what people deem impossible," he said.
The technical word for Helou's achievement is "lipogrammatism," which means deliberately omitting a certain letter when writing. The novel, published in May 2006, is actually part of the genre of thriller.
Dr. Helou faced a few problems while trying to avoid repetition, particularly with some of the key words appearing in the novel.
"The difficulty I faced was when I tried to avoid repetition, since all the events in the novel revolve around words like 'trick' or 'plot'," said Helou, "so I had to use several synonyms for the word trick in order to avoid monotony."
"Also, since two of the stories take place on a river and in water; two words with the letter "e", I had to replace them with other expressions or similar words."
This novel meets the requirements of any standard tale, Helou argues. "It has all the elements of a fully-fledged story. It is more of a thriller than a mere story. Many of my colleagues said they had been so captivated by the flow of events that they were urged to read on, from one chapter to the next until they had read the four chapters in one sitting. This is synonymous with interest; it also proves that I have achieved my goal."
It took Helou about 18 months to finish the novel; at the time, he was teaching at two universities while also giving training seminars and workshops on English at several educational institutions.
"The novel took about one year and a half, but during that time I was teaching at AUST and at LAU, besides lecturing in other places," Helou said. "Sometimes I would write ten pages in a given week, and sometimes I would leave the story for two or three weeks without writing even a word."
"Most of the people who hear about the story are eager to do two things: First, to find out how it is possible to create a good story while not using the most frequently used letter and word. Second, they're curious to check if there are any words with the letter "e" that have wormed their way into the novel," Helou said.
Helou outlined a few other lofty ambitions for his work. "I expect to see my novel in Hollywood, made into a film where the actors have to learn all the words by heart and make the film without any letter 'e'. This may sound impossible, but the latter is a word that does not exist in my dictionary, especially that I depend on God in all that I do. Seeing the book in the World Book of Records is also another goal I am in the process of achieving."
The second edition of "Jack and Mary" is now in local bookstores, after the first edition sold out.
Six schools in Lebanon have assigned "Jack and Mary" for reading or research activity. "The teachers are assigning the story as an incentive for students to be creative and to read something which is not ordinary and not like any other story they've read," Helou said.
"In Dubai the story has also been assigned as a research work," he added.
Helou promised he will soon release something even more intriguing than "Jack and Mary" into the market, but preferred to stay mum about the details.
"The feedback I have so far received from the readers has encouraged me to venture into something more captivating," he said.
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