In 1939, a writer named Ernest Vincent Wright published a 50,000-word novel entitled <em>Gadsby</em>. (Do not confuse this with F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel, <em>The Great Gatsby</em>).
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<em>Gadsby </em>isn't famous for its literary merits, but for something else. See if you can tell what it is by looking carefully at the opening paragraphs, below.
The unusual feature is easy to see once you spot it. You don't need to be a native English speaker. Anyone can see it. It may even be <em>easier</em> to see if you <em>don't</em> know English well.
After the passage, I have some hints, and a link to the answer.
Extract from <em>Gadsby</em>:
If Youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn't constantly run across folks today who claim that "a child don't know anything." A child's brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult's act, and figuring out its purport.
Up to about its primary school days a child thinks, naturally, only of play. But many a form of play contains disciplinary actors. "You can't do this," or "that puts you out," shows a child that it must think, practically, or fail. Now, if, throughout childhood, a brain has no opposition, it is plain that it will attain a position of "status quo," as with our ordinary animals. Man knows not why a cow, dog or lion was not born with a brain on a par with ours; why such animals cannot add, subtract, or obtain from books and schooling, that paramount position which Man holds today.
But a human brain is not in that class. Constantly throbbing and pulsating, it rapidly forms opinions; attaining an ability of its own; a fact which is startlingly shown by an occasional child "prodigy" in music or school work. And as, with our dumb animals, a child's inability convincingly to impart its thoughts to us, should not class it as ignorant.
Upon this basis I am going to show you how a bunch of bright young folks did find a champion; a man with boys and girls of his own; a man of so dominating and happy individuality that Youth is drawn to him as is a fly to a sugar-bowl. It is a story about a small town. It is not a gossipy yarn; nor is it a dry, monotonous account, full of such customary "fill-ins" as "romantic moonlight casting murky shadows down a long, winding country road." Nor will it say anything about tinklings lulling distant folds; robins carolling at twilight, nor any "warm glow of lamplight" from a cabin window. No. It is an account of up-and-doing activity; a vivid portrayal of Youth as it is today; and a practical discarding of that worn-out notion that "a child don't know anything."
Hint #1. The passage is mostly in gramatically correct English. "A child don't know anything," however, is colloquial and grammatically wrong; it should be "A child doesn't know anything."
Hint #2. "Tinklings lulling distant folds" is a reference to a poem, Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," which contain the line "And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds." It is a famous poem, but that is not a famous line. There is a reason why he chose that one, and a reason why he did not quote the exact words.
Hint #3. This paragraph, "hint #3," shows a similarity, a small amount of similarity, to <em>Gadsby,</em> and shows how, by taking a lot of thought and doing much slow and laborious work, I can do what Wright did.
If you give up, the answer is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
Good point. And he could have written "A child don't know nothing" and sounded even folksier.
Strange that he'd write "A child don't know anything" just to avoid the "e" when he could have correctly written "A child knows nothing" and met that goal.
