DAVID HOCKNEY

E by Gore Vidal

I have never liked the look of ‘E’. Yes, it is agreeably triune and if you place it on its back there is Neptune’s trident. But placed on its stomach you get a garden rake, gardener’s on-going guilt emblemized. Personally E reminds me of the Christian name that I long ago gave up along with the religion for which it stands – ‘Eugene’. Yes, Eugene means ‘one of noble birth’ but, to an American writer, Eugen is the name of Thomas Wolfe’s windy protagonist, as well as of a playwright whose second wind was even greater than his first. On the positive side, E is the first letter of many Greekderived words – euphonious and euphemistic (Faulkner always mixed up their meanings) and ectomorph. This last is preferable, obviously, to endomorph but then neither can hold a candle (or even an ‘i’) to our old buddy mesomorph, further along in the alphabet. Naturally ‘E’ carried weight as a vowel but for a resident of a Latin country, which I am, the candle ‘i’ is really enough and the confusion that ‘i’ and ‘e’ (together or separately) causes Romancelanguage speakers when they take on English is hardly worth the trouble. But now I’ve written the word ‘English’ and one can move to high happy ground. Nothing wrong with our beautiful vast complex unknowable (by one person) language which so significantly begins with an E. The fact it should be I only adds duplicitous lustre to the vowel letter, so very like a comb, unsnarling hyacinthine locks, taming Medusan curls – E – a cry! The sadness of the Housman sort – Eheu!