Le train de nulle part or The Train from Nowhere

By Michel Dansel

Poets and authors are always to some extent crazy or whimsical.

In many cases their craziness or eccentricity immortalizes them casting stamps

of novelty to their literary activities. In such cases the craziness of an author

paves the way to a new type of writing, a new style. Samuel Johnson once said

“What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure.” Probably,

that is why writers having extra ordinary talent are sometimes seen indulging in

unorthodox style to their writing.  In initial stages these may appear sheer

craziness but the apparent craziness in course of time proves to be a namesake

to the innovative experimentation of that author. This type of writing is called

constrain writing. And it can be affirmed without any reserve that constrained

writing is a fruit of genius artistic innovation. It is a literary

technique where the writer voluntarily imposes

some mandatory conditions that forbid him to do certain things and this self-

imposed restriction ultimately gives birth to a new pattern.

Like many other literary innovations, constrain literatures also originated in

ancient Greece as early as 6th BC. According to Addison ‘Lipogram’, the earliest

form of constrain writing was practiced by Tryphiodorus in his Oddyssey.

Indranil Sarkar

Modern researchers have found the existence of constrain writing in the 13th

century England. Shakespearean sonnets may also be considered in this case.

Shakespeare not only brought innovation in the thematic and stylistic aspects of

the sonnet but also wrote unorthodox sonnets of 12 & 15 lines [no.126 & no.99

respectively.] And probably this uniqueness later on inspired poets like Hopkins,

Milton and many others to break up the mandatory rule of 14 line sonnet

tradition & compose 8 line, 28 line(double sonnet), or 36 line sonnets.

Lipogram literarily means ‘letter dropping’. It is a backformation i.e. a

word-formation by removing suffixes or prefixes of an existing word. The very

term is derived from Greek adjective lipogrammatos meaning ‘wanting a letter’.

In rhetoric, sometimes situational changes are brought through the dexterous

jugglery of letters in a word which promulgate constrain in the writing style.

Constrain writing in general and Lipogram in particular was not

considered a good style. The terms were used in condemnatory senses. Joseph

Addison used the term in English for the first time in 1711 in his famous series

of essays in the Spectator. To quote him from the May 11, 1711 issue: “As true

Wit generally consists in this Resemblance and Congruity of Ideas, false

Wit chiefly consists in the Resemblance and Congruity sometimes of single

Letters, as in Anagrams, Chronograms, Lipograms, and Acrosticks; Sometimes

of Words, as in Punns and Quibbles; and sometimes of whole Sentences or

Poems, cast into the Figures of Eggs, Axes or Altars ...". The tradition of

constrain writing, however, paid a deaf ear to Addison’s arrogance and went on

increasing in various newer dimensions.

E.M.Forster in his lucid essay ‘Notes on the English Character’ has

narrated the specialty of the French life-style any how they differ from the

English. The French are known for putting art into everything they do: be it food

or fashion. This is also true for their literature. Constrain writing occupies a

vintage ground in French literature. French literature can rightly be called far

richer in this regard than English literature.

Moliere was not only a great litterateur of international acclaim; he was a great

wordsmith also. A wordsmith is not just someone who writes interesting tales

but also a writer who writes in a different or unconventional manner to make his

tale interesting. And quite justifiably Moliere claims the inspiration behind

various constrain writing in French literature.

The latest or the newest activity in the field of Constrain literature is a

type of writing where the writer deliberately castoffs the use of verbs. In other

words, here the author rejects the claims of verbs as indispensable for the

communication of one’s feelings and mental conditions, and as such writes

without verbs. The idea was daringly fantastic and nobody could guess the

potential of such a type of writing or such a type of literary activity until Michel

Dansel (Michel Thales), the French doctor of letters, made it possible in 2004.

The apparently impossible task of writing a

novel without using a single verb was made possible by a French Doctor of

letters named Michel Dansel when he published a 233 page novel under the pen

name of Michel Thales in June, 2004.The novel was named ‘La Train de Nulle

Part’ and its English translated version was called ‘The Nowhere Train’. It was

the first of its kind and might be considered the greatest work of constrain

literature after A Void, the book written without the letter "e" and its sequel

Gadsby with no vowel except "e." 

Michel Dansel was very serious about the unconventionality of the book and

hailed it a step towards the future literature having direct impetus of Dadaism

and Surrealism of the last century. So, instead of celebrating the publication

ceremony of the book in conventional manner, he arranged for a gorgeous

funeral ceremony. To him it was a ceremony to bury the verbs, because “verbs

are invaders, dictators and usurpers of French literature".

On the fateful day, about 300 guests, including

publishers, journalists and academics, were invited to a "funeral" at the

Sorbonne University in Paris. Attendants were asked to turn out in mourning

dress. They were also desirous of undertaking a funeral procession in a horse

drawn hearse. But, the police banned guests marching behind a horse-drawn

hearse as a "threat to public order". Michel Dansel, while addressing the

venerable guests highlighted that the verb “is like a weed in a field of flowers”.

He continued, “One has to get rid of it to allow the flowers to grow and flourish.

If the verbs are taken away the language will speak for itself”. He further held

that the verbs “make a language cumbersome and obliterate clarity of the

language”. He continued further to justify his stand (humorously) in this

manner: "I am like a car driver, who has smashed the windscreen so I cannot

see into the future, smashed the rear-view mirror so I cannot see the past, and

is travelling in the present”.

The staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal, Cassell Bryan Low and Anne-

Michele Morice reported the occasion in the following words at per with the

writing style of the novel(i.e. verb-less sentences)----

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 09:09:34 -0400

“All Talk, No Action: 

A Funeral for Verbs, 

With Few Pallbearers 

In Mr. Dansel's Curious Book, 

Something ... Not There; 

'Strangely Unappetizing”.

And finally, the publisher of ADCAN wrote about the book in the following

manner: "Le Train de Nulle Part or "The Nowhere Train ”: ‘A torrent

of adjectives, adverbs, interjections and funky nouns. Also heavy doses

of commas, semicolons, colons---and dashes, too. And the result, the first-ever

French novel without verbs, as well as "brilliant, baroque, and original." 

So far as the plot of the novel is concerned, there are not much of traditional

staffs. Here, we find the narrator undertaking a train journey and his encounters

with the most common and unappealing personalities of the world. It contains

lengthy passages of flowery

prose, but not a lot of action. It is set on a train and features a series of caustic

cameos of fellow passengers who, while not doing much, manage to bring out

the poison in Dansel’s pen.

A famous passage of the novel reads: "In that carriage, between the grumpy

woman oozing vulgarity and the similarly asinine creature with her, the

progenitor and her eczematous brat, the purple-faced fatso, the half-bald guy

like a vegetarian may-bug, the verbose matinee idol and the crazy witch, no

room for me." 

His caustic attack on feminine stereo type is

further expressed in the words: "Those women over there, probably mothers,

bearers of ideas far too voluminous for their modest brains,"

But it would be wrong to judge him as a misogynist. (His friends opine that

Mr.Dansel have amicable relationship with the feminine folk). He attacked his

male co-passengers in equally venomous words. He described one of them as

"a large dwarf or small giant - a young buck with a gelled mop" whose ideas

were "almost certainly shorter than his hair".

The following extract (song) reveals the inherent unique literary flavour of the

author: “What a godsend! A free seat, or nearly, in this compartment. An

optional stops, why not! So my new address in this train from nowhere: carriage

12, 3rd compartment facing the engine. Again, why not? - Good morning, ladies

and gentlemen. A segment of the journey with you! Or maybe not! Like the

whole itinerary, at least mine!

Dispute or controversy is the very soul of innovative works. This

‘writing san verbs’ is also not an exception. It is said that the writing style in

question was in reality the brain child of a New Jersey high school student. So,

in Conclusion it would be blasphemous unless due credit of this new literary

innovation is given to its real creator. According to Mark Lieberman s., Mr.

Thales or Mr. Damsel was scooped in 2001 by Miranda Tedholm, a 17-year-old

New Jersey high school student about the possibility of writing without verbs.

She was a female New Jersey high school student, whose brain capacity was

enough larger than Thaler’s. She conceived the idea first. But, she gave it up

after seven paragraphs for some unknown reasons. Whatsoever, her ingenuity

was honoured and she was awarded a Scholastic Art and Writing award in the

category of Humour before finally putting into oblivion.

The truth or falsity of the story can be confirmed by Mr.Dansel only but the

modern world regards him as a great innovator in constrain writing next only to

Moliere.[1626]

References, Links etc.:

[Quotes, photographs, and references are taken from the following websites. The link id(s) are furnished for further study]

1. www.wikipedia.org

2. www. H at’s site.com

3. www.blogsome.com

4. www.jstor.org

5. www.poeticstoday.dukejournals.org

6. www.google.co.in(images) [all photographs are collected following the guidelines of Creative Commons license]

7. www.en.wikipedia.org

8. www.michel–dansel.over-blog.com

9. The concluding sentences are from the Post of Mark Lieberman on May 12, 2004 06:54 AM in www.Hat’s site.com]

A few memorable Pictures from ‘A Train to Nowhere’

NB. Everything has been done following the freedom given at per the. Creative Commons License.

Attribution