Perec & Matthews

In reading Matthews, it really helped me to better understand the concept of the lipogram as well as the Oulipo group. In better understanding those two concepts, it helped me in reading A Void. I found that the book was getting easier to read as I went along. I don't know if that is because of the reading by Matthews or just the way the story goes. It was interesting to me to read what Matthews said about Perec not writing the book to produce an amazing story. This was something brought up in my group's discussion on Monday. I find it funny that someone would want to write a 300 page novel and not want it to be a great book. It's also even more ironic that so many people want to read this novel. The story isn't that fantastic, yet so many people have read and heard of this book just because it doesn't use the letter "e." It is astonishing to me how someone can write a whole novel with a plot without using that letter. I give Perec props for that, yet don't understand why anyone would want to do such a thing. I still found it to be a little distracting just knowing that "e" was never used. I didn't try to look for errors, but part of me feels that maybe subconsciously I was trying to find them.