Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters, by Mark Dunn

June's Selection

Ella Minnow Pea: A novel in letters, a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable, by Mark Dunn.

Discussion led by Linda Smith

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1.  What was your reaction to Ella Minnow Pea?

2.  Letter Form

Mark Dunn: "I'm on a mission that every new novel I write is going to bend or tweak narrative as much as I can. I think writers need to be a little more daring. There are a lot of ways to tell stories and construct narratives that writers shy away from because they want to be either traditional or safe. I decided that's not going to be my mission."

Why has the author chosen to tell this story through letters rather than a more straightforward narrative?  How does the structure of the novel enhance Dunn’s purpose?

3. New words/expressions

All the inhabitants of Nollop are forced into linguistic contortions to avoid being prosecuted by the High Council, substituting words like "cephalus" for "head" and "sub-terra" for "underground" .  Sometimes hybrids

are made that combine the sounds and meanings of two different words,. Example: leapdash, vocabulazy.  Also Dunn invents a number of phrases to express an idea without the use of a banned letter.

Example spinal-defectives

What are some of the more amusing verbal acrobatics the people are forced to perform?

4.  Language restriction:

The entire plot of Ella Minnow Pea hinges on a paradox: Nevin Nollop taught his people to revere language and extend its perimeters; yet in enforcing Nollop’s supposed posthumous ‘wishes’,  the Council subjects language to unpardonable indignities and shrinks its perimeters to strait-jacket proportions.

How is Nollop affected by the enforced impoverishment of its language? In particular what effects does this shrinkage have on the relationships and interior lives of Nollop’s citizens?

5. Totalitarian effects:

Almost everybody in Nollop seems to be unhappy with the council’s edicts, yet no one is able to effectively resist them. Why? What does this suggest about the ways that totalitarian regimes affect not only the outward lives but the hearts and minds of their subjects? Are Nollop’s inhabitants simply “spinal defectives,”  or does their passivity have a more complex motivation?

6.  Religious belief systems:

At the novel’s close Ella describes Nollop, the person, as a “low order primate [ape] elevated to high order ecclesiastical primate [church official], elevated still further in these darkest last days to ultimate prime-A-grade superior being.”  Do you see the novel as a commentary on religious authoritarianism [humans assuming they know God’s will]?  What does the novel seem to suggest about belief systems?

7. New memorial:

At the end of the novel, Ella suggests a memorial to those who suffered from the High Council's tyranny: "a large box filled with sixty moonshine jugs–piled high, toppling over, corks popping, liquor flowing. Disorder to match the clutter and chaos of our marvelous language. Words upon words, piled high, toppling over, thoughts popping, correspondence and conversation overflowing" [p. 203].

Why is this an appropriate memorial?