A lipogram is a piece of literature that is written without one specific letter. It is actually really tough to write these than you think, but try to scale up against this novel:

Gadsby (not to be confused with The Great Gatsby) is a novel containing 50,000 words without using one specific letter. See if you can guess it based on the book’s plot!

In 1906, John Gadsby, this book’s protagonist, is angry that Branton Hills’ quality is going down. Branton Hills is Gadsby’s childhood city, and thus starts an organization known as “Organization of Youth” to transform Branton Hills into a bustling city. This, although with criticism, works, and Gadsby is city mayor and Branton Hills’ population is 60,000, a gigantic boost from 2,000 prior.

Found it?

It was really hard to write the summary, because the summary, like the book, does not contain the letter “e’!

The book starts with an introductory paragraph explaining the book’s quirk and how hard it was. Since this wasn’t part of the book itself, it uses the letter “e”. It was published in 1939 and has since influenced other lipograms. For example, in 1969, the French book A Void was published, with the same quirk, and has been referenced a lot.

In 1937, the author, Ernest Vincent Wright, suggested that insomnia sufferers try to write lipograms to combat sleeplessness. He said he tied down the “e” key on his typewriter so as to not slip it in; however, in the original 1939 printing, pages 51, 103, 124 use “the” and page 213 uses “officers”, both of which contain “e”.

This is even more impossible to understand since “e” is the most commonly used letter in the alphabet. The Wikipedia page for the book supposedly had an edit war over whether or not the page should be written without the “e” to be a tribute.

This proves that, like the book’s theme, anything can be possible. And sometimes, you have to concentrate REALLY hard to make it happen. Or, in this case, tie down a button and still let it slip through.