Effaced Nabokov, 2014-2015

An “edition” of altered copies of Dimitry Nabokov, editor, The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov, New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2009. Spector chose Dimitry Nabokov’s homage to his late father’s unwritten last book because of the Chip Kidd design of its text block, in which the 138 handwritten postcards comprising the extent of Vladimir Nabokov’s preparations to write The Original of Laura are reproduced in consecutive life-size images on the recto, with the (mostly) blank backs of the cards on the verso. The cards are each perforated so that presumably a buyer of the book could detach them and hold in his/her hands a facsimile Nabokovian artifact. This conceit appealed to Spector both because Kidd’s design included images of the cards in white against a full-page gray backdrop, and because the perforations propose a managed excisioning of its substance against the grain, so to speak, of the excising that the artist performed on six found copies of the book.

The text or image blocks are torn away systematically, with the first leaf completely removed, the last leaf left intact, and all leaves in-between excised in decreasing portions, front to back, to make a diagonal cross-section of the book pages.

Altered found book made from copies of Dimitry Nabokov, ed. The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov, New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2009.

2 x 12.5 x 9.5 inches

Edition of 6 unique versions