"For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."

Legend has it that those six words make up an entire story by Ernest Hemingway. According to the story, Hemingway was lunching with some fellow writers and bet he could write a story--complete: beginning, middle, end--in six words. His friends disagreed and bet $10 each. Hemingway immediately wrote those six words on a napkin, passed it around, and everyone handed over $10.

That's just one of ten odd/weird/curious/charming stories surrounding literature that Mark Juddery of Mental Floss (via CNN) recounts.

This includes...:

1.) ...Ernest Vincent Wright writing the 50,000 word novel Gadsby without using the letter E. Ever. At all. Not once. Because writing novels is easy enough when you have all 26 letters available.

Hell, I just used the letter E twenty-two times on the tiny section right there explaining about Gadsby.

2.) David Shulman wrote a sonnet. Not that impressive, I grant you. But what if I said the sonnet was titled Washington Crossing the Delaware? And that all fourteen lines of the sonnet were an anagram of the title? And that it was all done in rhyming couplets?

Yeah, I'm already feeling like a deadbeat by comparison, too. Don't worry.

3.) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby was written by a series of eye blinks (done only with with left eyelid) which were translated into Bauby's memoir. This was all done because Bauby had a massive stroke which paralyzed his body.

But the real issue is whether he could have done all that while not using the letter E.





4.) Sri Chinmoy was a spiritual leader. But apparently his spirit had a lot of free time, because he enjoyed writing. A lot. As in 1,000 books, 20,000 songs, and 115,000 poems. I know what you're thinking: what an underachiever! What? No plays?

On November 1, 1975, Chinmoy wrote 843 poems. He didn't start the 843 poems on November 1. Oh, no, no. He started and completed all 843 poems within a 24hr period.

I don't know if Chinmoy believed in caffeinated products, but an endorsement deal with Maxwell House Coffee would have been a good idea.