Steve Norquist: The color
stills communicate the tragedy, especially the deluded enthusiastic
youngsters unaware of their own doom, in ways old History Channel footage
and other media do not. By the old adage about a picture being "worth"
1000 words, these are at least a short
novel.
JM: Thanks for the indirect correction
("enthusiastic").
Images are double-edged and the short-novel you
mention has yet to be written (According to novelist John Fowles "images
are eminently tyrannical." - unfortunately I cannot remember where he said
that).
VN once stated: "Down, Plato, clown, good dog. An image
depends on the power of association, and
association is supplied and prompted by
memory...When we speak of a vivid individual recollection we are paying a
compliment not to our capacity of retention but to Mnemosyne's
mysterious foresight in having stored up this or that element which
creative imagination may want to use when combining
it with later recollections and inventions. In this sense, both memory and
imagination are a negation of time." (the present quote, omitting
Fido, came from the internet, related to Nabokov's interview. (06)
Wisconsin Studies [1967] -www.kulichki.com/moshkow/.../Inter06.txt - ) *
* Actually the sentence I was looking for (also related to Plato's Republic, I suppose, following another
comment in S.O) is:
"I detest Plato, I loathe
Lacedaemon and all Perfect States. I weigh 195 pounds." ( from
The Nabokov-Wilson Letters: Correspondence between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund
Wilson, 1940-1971, in a dramatic dialogue adapted by Terry Quinn from the
texts of the collected letters Issue 157, Winter 2000, Paris Review. I
have no access to the book (SO) right now, only internet unreliable or variant
sources!