V by Thomas Pynchon, 1963 |
Z by Vassilis Vassilikos, 1966 |
G by John Berger, 1972 |
C by Anthony Cave Brown, 1988 |
S by John Updike, 1988 |
H by Elizabeth Shepard, 1995 |
Q by Paul Nigro, 2003 |
Q by Luther Blissett, 2004 |
Z by Michael Thomas Ford, 2010 |
C by Tom McCarthy, 2011 |
Q by Evan Madery, 2011 |
Z by Therese Anne Fowler, 2013 |
HHhH by Laurent Binet, 2013 |
J by Howard Jacobson, 2014 |
i wonder if this is in any way related (just incidentally/coincidentally/culturally) to Google showing a single letter for a user's avatar in some contexts. e.g. in gmail's inbox on Android i might show up as "S" and you might show up as "A".
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question, Stephan Beal. As an actual "trend" - and not just something that a few authors decided to do independently of each other - I would guess this one started in 2011 with the success of C leading to a few other authors (or their publishing companies) trying out single-letter titles. Where Tom McCarthy got the idea though, I'm not sure.
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