In 2004, a French author pulled off what many would consider impossible: writing an entire novel without using a single verb. Michel Dansel wrote a 233-page work called Le Train de Nulle Part (The Train from Nowhere) that eliminates what most consider an essential part of language.
Writing under the pen name Michel Thaler, this doctor of letters didn't just avoid verbs – he declared war on them. In the novel's preface, he denounced verbs as invasive dictators that usurp literature. He compared them to weeds choking out flowers in a garden, arguing that only by removing verbs could language truly flourish. Taking his crusade to theatrical heights, Thaler even organized a mock funeral for the verb at Paris's prestigious Sorbonne university.
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
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 Thaler's pen.
"Those women over there, probably mothers, bearers of ideas far too voluminous for their modest brains," he writes.
Such passages have led critics to deplore the book's "rare misogyny," but Thaler is equally venomous about the men he encounters on his journey. One is described as "a large dwarf or small giant — a young buck with a gelled mop" whose ideas were "almost certainly shorter than his hair".
Dansel's experiment joins other notable works of constrained writing, like Georges Perec's 1969 novel La Disparition, written entirely without the letter "e." Incredibly, it was translated into English in 1995 by Gilbert Adair, with the title A Void, which also avoided the letter "e."
For fun, I asked AI to generate a wordless version of the beginning of Alice in Wonderland. Here's the original:
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice "without pictures or conversations?"
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
Verbless version:
Alice, very tired of her place by her sister on the bank, and of nothing to do: once or twice, just a peek into her sister's book, but no pictures or conversations in it, "and what use of a book," through Alice's mind, "without pictures or conversations?"
Hence her own thoughts (as clear as possible, for the hot day with its sleepiness and stupidity), about the pleasure of a daisy-chain against the trouble of any movement toward the daisies – when suddenly! A White Rabbit with pink eyes, right past her.
I'd give it a C minus.
