Abraham Lincoln Gillespie, Jr., known to his friends as "Linky" or "Link," was part of the group of revolutionary writers who contributed to the Paris-based literary magazine transition during the twenties and thirties. Although his work was far from the most significant to appear in transition, his experiments with language were so flamboyant that they were often singled out for ridicule by the magazine's critics. A native of Philadelphia, Gillespie received a B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1918 and taught high school mathematics for several years until an automobile accident in 1922 left him with serious injuries from which he never fully recovered. Hoping that travel would improve his health, Gillespie and his wife went to Paris.

Even among the nonconformist Left Bank artists and writers, Gillespie was considered an eccentric, and a number of stories about him--some true and some apocryphal--began to circulate. The tales of...