Ella Minnow Pea
Authors: Mark Dunn
Mark Dunn’
s
Ella Minnow Pea
“Mark Dunn has penned a short parable about language and the freedom to use it. While maintaining an admirable light touch, he manages to make his points and entertain simultaneously, no small feat.”
—
The Commercial Appeal
“Playful yet cautionary.… A delight for people who love language.”
—
Time
“A cunning satire. The author deftly weaves the tale through a series of increasingly frantic letters.”
—
Austin American-Statesman
“
Ella Minnow Pea
is a remarkable feat of literary gamesmanship.… Challenging and memorable.”
—
Rain Taxi Review of Books
“Wordsmiths of every stripe will appreciate this whimsical fable, in which Dunn brilliantly demonstrates his ability to delight and captivate.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Dunn … stirs a lot of farce and comic relief into the story.… If you’re up to the deciphering task, you’ll go on a merry romp in this book.”
—
Library Journal
(starred)
Ella Minnow Pea
Mark Dunn is the author of more than twenty-five full-length plays.
Belles
and
Five Tellers Dancing in the Rain
have together received over 150 productions throughout the world and he has been the recipient of several national playwriting awards. He is currently playwright-in-residence with the New Jersey Repertory Company and the Community Theatre League in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Originally from Memphis, he now lives in Greenwich Village with his wife, Mary.
Ella Minnow Pea
is his first novel.
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 2002
Copyright © 2001 by Mark Dunn
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ella Minnow Pea
was originally published in hardcover in the United States by MacAdam/Cage Publishing in 2001.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-91177-8
Anchor ISBN: 0-385-72243-5
Book design by Mia Risberg
v3.1
For Mary
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For early support and input, the author wishes to thank Laura Atlas, Carolyn Weekley, and Phil Calbi; and Margaret Glover and Stephen Crook with the New York Public Library. Virginia Bartow, Curator of the Library’s Rare Books Collection, also earns special mention for assisting the author in his research. The author is additionally indebted to Pat Walsh and David Poindexter at MacAdam/Cage who have apparently decided that playwrights can, on occasion, produce publishable novels.
epistolary
(i pis´tl er eē),
adj.
1.
of or associated with letters or letter writing.
2.
of, pertaining to, or consisting of letters: an
epistolary
novel.
lip·o·gram
(lip
gram),
n.
a written work composed of words selected so as to avoid the use of one or more letters of the alphabet.
Nol·lop
(nol´ ǝp),
n.
a 63-square-mile autonomous island nation 21 miles southeast of Charleston, South Carolina. Established as a quasi-communal society by dispossessed southern Americans in the 1840s, the island declared its independence from the United States in 1870. Over the years the country’s leadership has sought to uplift its black and white citizens through almost monastic devotion to liberal arts education and scholarship, effectively elevating language to a national art form, while relegating modern technology to the status of avoidable nuisance. Formerly Utopianna, the country’s name was changed in 1904 to honor native son Nevin Nollop, the author of the popular pangram sentence
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
pan·gram
(pan´ grem -gram),
n.
a phrase, sentence or verse composed of all the letters of the alphabet:
A quirky novel with pages of zany, jumbled lexicon.
In the beginning was the Word.
GOSPEL OF JOHN, CHAPTER 1, VERSE 1
The wicked peon quivered, then gazed balefully at the judges who examined him.
ANONYMOUS TYPESETTER
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
NOLLOPTON
Sunday, July 23
Dear Cousin Tassie,
Thank you for the lovely postcards. I trust that you and Aunt Mittie had a pleasant trip, and that all your stateside friends and paternal relations are healthy and happy.
Much has happened during your one-month sojourn off-island. Perhaps your Village neighbors have apprised you. Or you may have glanced at one of the editions of
The Island Tribune
that have, no doubt, accumulated on your doorstep. However, I will make the safest assumption that you have yet to be offered the full account of certain crucial events of the last few days (tucked away as you and your mother are in your quiet and rustic little corner of our island paradise), and inform you of the most critical facts pertaining to such events. You’ll find it all, if nothing else, quite interesting.
On Monday, July 17, a most intriguing thing took place: one of the tiles from the top of the cenotaph at town center came loose and fell to the ground, shattering into a good many pieces. A young girl here, one Alice Butterworth, discovered the fallen tile at the base of the statue, carefully gathered up the bits and shards, and quickly conveyed them to the offices of the High Island Council. Tiny Alice delivered these fragments into the hands of Most Senior Gordon Willingham who promptly called an emergency meeting of that lofty body to glean purpose and design from this sudden and unexpected detachation.
This aforementioned gleaning—this is important.
Many in town were in attendance at this critical meeting. Olive, whom the laundress corps elected to attend as our representative/observer, given the need for a nearly full contingent of workers at the launderette on this particular day, returned much later than
expected to report the have-and-say of the lengthy session, specifically with regard to the aforementioned issue and question before the Council.