Le train de nulle part or The Train from Nowhere

By Michel Dansel

Indranil Sarkar

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.
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 Addisons 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 ones 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 publishers, journalists and academics, 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 AnneMichele 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 Dansels 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 Thalers. 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]

i.www.wikipedia.org
ii.www.Hats site.com
iii.www.blogsome.com
iv.www.jstor.org
v.www.poeticstoday.dukejournals.org
vi.www.google.co.in(images) [all photographs are collected following the guidelines of Creative Commons license]
vii.www.en.wikipedia.org
viii.www.micheldansel.over-blog.com
ix.The concluding sentences are from the Post of Mark Lieberman on May 12, 2004 06:54 AM in www.Hats site.com]
x.Creative Commons guidelines respected.

**