A wonderful book by
James Thurber, published in 1957, in which -- for reasons which now elude me, something to do with
Captain Black's mother being stuck in a
porthole, I gather --
pirates led by the Captain start banishing the letter O from the life of a hapless island they have taken over. As the island is called
Ooroo, a lot gets affected: they lose
clocks and
socks and so on, they lose
love and
mother... The islanders
Otto Ott and
Ophelia Oliver feel particularly hard done by.
(It had never until today occurred to me that there was any other reason for an O being wonderful.)