USEFUL ASPECTS |
Ella Minnow Pea, an epistolary tale as described by author Mark Dunn, will especially appeal to readers of the Fiction Writers Review not only as a highly entertaining work of fiction but a unique case of wordplay in which the written nature of the novel—down the very letter—plays a fundamental role in the telling of the story. It offers a refreshing and whimsical new take on the communication of the written word, something the island society of Ella Minnow Pea highly reveres until, one by one, their letters are slowly taken from them by the oppressive high council who misinterpret falling letter tiles from an idol statue as supernatural ordinance to abolish them. With more and more letters becoming outlawed as their tiles fall, Dunn both builds suspense and flexes his literary talent in the protagonists’ struggles to communicate with one another as their language quickly dwindles. Appropriately told in the form of letters between the characters, the story is able to successfully weave an engaging tale without allowing its clever wordplay design to overrule that story: in other words, the epistolary style here is not a mere gimmick but a critical element of the novel itself.
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AUTHOR INFO
Ella Minnow Pea is the debut novel of American playwright Mark Dunn, born in 1953 as an observer to the changing world of language and technology around him, especially with the new dominance of visual media. This novel's unique writing style serves as a play on the English language in order to examine its essential role in society, which Dunn's fiction writing background in this "new world" seems to have aided in the novel's effectiveness as a piece of entertaining social commentary. In a 2012 interview with author, playwright, and blogger Patrick Gabridge, Dunn reflects on the differences between novel-writing and playwriting, coming to the conclusion that the two art forms differ in the manner of expressing ideas. The author defined himself as “a storyteller who first learned to tell stories through dialogue,” requiring “an economy of words that must be respected” (Dunn). Dunn’s respect for words within the constraints of different mediums emanates throughout the pages of Ella Minnow Pea as he works through the limitations of a world where the letters of the alphabet gradually disappear, influencing his characters as they navigate a rapidly-changing nature of all aspects of language. From a reader’s perspective, Dunn’s background has certainly granted him a unique perspective towards different methods or mediums of communication.
Dunn, Mark. “The Juggler Interviews, #9: Mark Dunn.” Interview by Patrick Gabridge. The Writing Life x3, 2 May 2012, http://writinglife3.blogspot.com/2012/05/juggler-interviews-9-mark-dunn.html. Accessed 14 February 2018.
Dunn, Mark. “The Juggler Interviews, #9: Mark Dunn.” Interview by Patrick Gabridge. The Writing Life x3, 2 May 2012, http://writinglife3.blogspot.com/2012/05/juggler-interviews-9-mark-dunn.html. Accessed 14 February 2018.
METHODS AND SOURCES USED
Ella Minnow Pea was originally published with the subtitle: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable—a most appropriate subtitle given the nature of the book and the kind of language its characters speak (or write) but unfortunately more confusing than clarifying for the average bookstore goer. The present subtitle is: A Novel in Letters. This is essentially the definition of an epistolary novel but instead of jumping right into the complex, even archaic, vocabulary of the “Nollopians”, the reader is alluded to the unique storytelling of Ella Minnow Pea and its play on the English language. The novel does, indeed, become progressively lipogrammatic (which Dunn helpfully defines early on as a work which avoids the use of one or more letters) but it seems this is a mystery now left to be delightfully uncovered in reading.
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