Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0003631, Thu, 21 Jan 1999 15:13:35 -0800

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VN Bibliography: Kevin Dann, _Bright Colors . . ._ (fwd)
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From: Jay Livingston <livingston@saturn.montclair.edu>

The LC number (BF 495) puts this book with psychology; the author teaches
history. So perhaps it has not been mentioned already in the bibliographic
messages of this Listserv. If I'm wrong, I apologize for the redundancy.

"Nabokov's most characteristic subjective visual experience, a type of
'hallucination' that endlessly recurs in his writing, is not discussed in . . .
any . .chapter of 'Speak, Memory.' Instead, it hides in plain sight, like so
much of Nabokov's artistry. . . . Eidetic imaging is the 'method' of his
autobiography and of his fiction, a method he discloses at the outset of 'Speak,
Memory,' but which has gone undetected."

>From Kevin T. Dann, "Bright Colors Falsely Seen: Synaesthesia and the Search
for Transcendental Knowledge," (1998, Yale U. Press), ch. 5, "The Gift:
Vladimir Nabokov's Eidetic Technique."