Wright spent five and a half months writing Gadsby on a typewriter with the "e" key tied down so that it couldn't be used at all. A warehouse holding copies of Gadsby burned shortly after the book was printed, destroying most copies of the ill-fated novel. The book was never reviewed and only kept alive by the efforts of a few avant-garde intellos and assorted connoisseurs of the odd, weird and zany. But by word-of-mouth it has become an underground cult classic. The book's scarcity and oddness has in the past seen copies priced at $4,000 by book dealers. Over time, this peculiar masterpiece has had many curious readers open to this interestingly unusual reading experience.