Linguist, lexicographer, radio host, public speaker

“Why does it start with A B C and not F D Q?”

Elizabeth Hand reviews David Plante’s book ABC for the Washington Post. She describes it as an eccentric contemporary folk tale about a grief-bound pack of new acquaintances compulsively in search of the origins of the alphabet. “What is an alphabet, really, but a means of expressing what is inexpressible: the sum of all human history and experience and longing? ‘They were aware of this, aware of every single object as an icon of some greater meaning than each object had in itself.’”

author avatar
Grant Barrett