One-letter book titles
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In response to Tom McCarthy's novel C being shortlisted for the Booker prize, abebooks.com has posted "The A to Z of the Shortest Book Titles". A surprisingly large number of the letters of the alphabet are still available. Even if we ignore punctuation and superscripts, only A, C, E, G, H, K, M, N, O, P, Q, S, V, W, X, Y, and Z are taken — if you get to work quickly, you have a shot at being the first to publish a work with the title B, D, F, I, J, L, R, T, or U.
D.O. said,
October 14, 2010 @ 12:05 am
I am surprised that I and U are not taken. "I" is a word and "U" is almost one. By the way, how about translations of the foreign books? Did non-English writers missed those letters as well?
Vance Maverick said,
October 14, 2010 @ 12:52 am
Looking into the UC Berkeley catalog, I see that Pablo de Rokha published a book called U in 1926. Likewise Vsevolod Ivanov, if У counts. (1932, published later.) I think people just aren't looking hard enough.
(Hope the Ivanov link works.)
D.O. said,
October 14, 2010 @ 1:00 am
Sue Grafton writes detective stories with titles of the type "A is for Alibi". So far letters A through U are covered, but the series is in progress.
Vance Maverick said,
October 14, 2010 @ 1:04 am
Similarly, here's a published book called I; and here's another, by a famous author in English (if subtitles don't count).
Vance Maverick said,
October 14, 2010 @ 1:17 am
T, again by a well-known author (though not in English).
Is there a limit on the number of links per comment?
Vance Maverick said,
October 14, 2010 @ 1:24 am
B. F.
Rhacodactylus said,
October 14, 2010 @ 1:39 am
But D.O. we should remember that those novels are awful, and thus unlikely to be counted in the tally =)
I'm sort of surprised there aren't more untitled works. I sometimes have trouble coming up with an encapsulating engaging title for blog entries, much less a book with a few hundred pages.
~Rhaco
carat said,
October 14, 2010 @ 1:46 am
in the almost made it category they have two "We"s but not the most famous one by Zamyatin
groki said,
October 14, 2010 @ 2:50 am
looks like the forgotten letter isn't taken yet either.
"?" is the book title I'd like to see–with a blurb on the jacket reading "!" of course–even though it too would suffer from the "Single letter titles are not particularly friendly to Internet search engines" problem noted in the linked article.
Brian said,
October 14, 2010 @ 3:14 am
"I" would have to be an autobiography.
Axel Svahn said,
October 14, 2010 @ 3:29 am
"F" has been covered since 1968, although there is also a subtitle.
Non-English. Title page here.
Ian Preston said,
October 14, 2010 @ 3:30 am
@ groki: Is this what you are looking for?
I appears to be taken too.
Alon Lischinsky said,
October 14, 2010 @ 3:57 am
The Abebooks list is far from complete. The section on Books that almost made the cut is also missing Barthes' influential S/Z.
Ian Preston said,
October 14, 2010 @ 4:22 am
Where do books like these fit in?
jim said,
October 14, 2010 @ 6:29 am
@carat: Yes, I noticed the absence of Zamyatin. I thought they might only be considering English-language works, but they include "W" by Georges Perec, and "Мы" is 2 letters only in the Russian as well.
Leonardo Boiko said,
October 14, 2010 @ 6:47 am
Personally I’d like to read Þ and Ð.
Japanese and Chinese authors can play this game much longer.
Nicholas Waller said,
October 14, 2010 @ 6:59 am
You'd think the new C book would indeed be tricky for Google but this Booker nominee by McCarthy comes up 5th on my search for C , despite there being several C (progamming language) books out for decades, and despite there being over three billion results. Presumably in time as the newsworthyness of his book fades, he will slip away.
And at least in the UK, Google searches for you'd-have-thought-Google-unfriendly Yes and The The come up with the relevant bands on top.
Nigel Purdy said,
October 14, 2010 @ 7:57 am
Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W.
Dick Margulis said,
October 14, 2010 @ 9:51 am
abebooks typically lists the inventory of its members, dealers in rare and used books; so it is unsurprising that its list is less than comprehensive. In any case, I think & is a candidate title too (I haven't searched to see if it has been taken), given that it was once treated as a letter of the alphabet.
Theodore said,
October 14, 2010 @ 11:11 am
Too bad E and T are taken. I would have liked to see them as autobiographies of Mark Oliver Everett and Laurence Tureaud, respectively. Any other one-letter [potential] authors out there?
richard howland-bolton said,
October 14, 2010 @ 12:49 pm
Does Æ count?
It could be used for an Bio of George William Russell
the next Prescott Niles said,
October 14, 2010 @ 1:33 pm
Nicholson Baker wishes he'd thought to publish this one in two volumes.
Will said,
October 14, 2010 @ 2:19 pm
A couple years ago someone made a list of one-letter band names:
http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/yradish/29297/single-letter-band-names/
Ralph Hickok said,
October 14, 2010 @ 2:35 pm
It's not a novel, but I have a copy of a book by E. E. Cummings titled "i" and subtitled "six nonlectures." It's a collection of the Charles Eliot Norton lectures (or "nonlectures") that he gave at Harvard in the 1953-54 year.
Jen said,
October 14, 2010 @ 3:01 pm
Here's I, with no subtitle.
groki said,
October 14, 2010 @ 3:11 pm
@Ian Preston: nice examples. I tried +, ∞, @, and ə, but no luck.
Sili said,
October 14, 2010 @ 3:56 pm
Y?
–o–
Does The Story of O count?
Peter said,
October 14, 2010 @ 4:25 pm
Moving beyond fiction, the logician C. J. Mulvey is well known for the paper & introducing an important system for quantum logic.
Jesús Sanchis said,
October 14, 2010 @ 6:11 pm
Not surprisingly, a book about the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur is an obvious candidate for the list. Link
Spell Me Jeff said,
October 14, 2010 @ 8:24 pm
This won't help me out with the feminists, but for your consideration:
YRUPMSŋ
Jerry Friedman said,
October 15, 2010 @ 10:59 am
@Leonardo Boiko: I don't suppose you'll settle for this.
maxh said,
December 2, 2010 @ 2:31 pm
Well, I just did NaNoWriMo. L is now taken.