Last year I had a crack at writing and publishing a couple
of little books through the ebook publisher Smashwords. I was curious to see
just how do-able the whole process is, and found it surprisingly easy. What an
amazing thing is this age of computers and the internet! One of my books is a
freebie about the enigmatic and fascinating Opal Whiteley, and the other is a modestly-priced biographical work which grew out of ideas in the first
book. "Famous synaesthetes" is a theme that runs through my two books, a topic that I know a thing
or two about since establishing in 2008 and continually adding to my huge online list
of famous synaesthetes, which is one of the most popular posts at this blog.
In my second book I drew numerous comparisons between three
mysterious, most fascinating, famous and to arguably tragic people: Val Lewton,
the respected producer of 1940s Hollywood horror films, Helen Demidenko/Darville,
the Australian debut novelist who managed to ignite a fire-storm of controversy
on a number of different intellectual fronts in the 1990s in Australia, and Jani
Schofield, the tragic Californian girl with a controversial psychiatric
diagnosis who was placed at the centre of an international media circus in 2009
by her parents. The fourth unusual personality discussed in my book is a
fictional but to an unknown degree autobiographical character created by
Lewton, the young girl Amy in the classic psychological movie Curse of the Cat
People. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think I might be the only person
in the world to write a book exploring commonalities in the biographies of this
particular collection of personalities.
In the course of writing my second book I compared Lewton’s exceptional memory for novels and literature combined with a prodigious ability to memorise such texts at speed with the legendary memory of Solomon Shereshevskii, the Russian memory performer and journalist who was tested and examined over a span of decades by the Russian psychologist Alexander Luria. Luria’s case study of Shereshevskii was published in the book The Mind of a Mnemonist in 1968. In addition to Shereshevskii’s memory, the variety of types of synaesthesia that Shereshevskii experienced was documented in Luria’s influential book. In my book I also pointed out similarities between Lewton and another famous synaesthete. I noted that the Lewton biographer Joel Siegel had compared the attention to details evident in Lewton’s work with the concern with details shown by the Russian synaesthete novelist Vladimir Nabokov. As I reflected upon the biographical and neuropsychological facts that I had learned about Lewton, Shereshevskii and Nabokov, an ever-growing list was compiled, a list of common traits. The size of this list suggests to me that here is something that needs to be explained. I believe I have seen a pattern, a type of person. What do you think? Just a handful of coincidences?
All three men were born in Russia (Lewton’s birthplace,
Yalta, was part of Russia at the time). Two of the men were named Vladimir
(Lewton’s real first name). Two had Jewish heritage (Nabokov didn’t, but
married a Jew). All three men were probably or definitely born with
intellectual gifts; Lewton with a prodigious boyhood obsession with stories and
literature, Nabokov passing through a curious early period of mathematical
savantism (documented in his autobiography Speak, Memory), and Shereshevskii
coming from a family in which intellectual gifts were evident in other family
members. Two of the men definitely spoke Russian and also English in childhood
(I don’t know whether Shereshevskii knew English as a boy). Nabokov and Lewton
were both certainly gifted with words, both published novelists and Nabokov a
polyglot. All three men had worked as writers (Shereshevskii was a journalist
when he was “discovered” as a case of exceptional memory by Luria). Joel’s
point about Nabokov and Lewton both showed a remarkable appreciation and care
for details is a valid one, and I would cite Shereshevskii’s detailed accounts
of his own synaesthesia in Luria’s book and his savant-level ability to recall
huge volumes of seemingly meaningless data as evidence of an exceptional
ability to focus on and process details. All three men had memories that have
been described as eidetic or photographic. All three men created scenes in
their minds for a living; Lewton an uncredited movie director in addition to
screenwriter and producer, and also a novelist, Shereshevskii memorizing huge
volumes of data apparently in a visual format, and Nabokov creating visual
images in his fictional and autobiographical books. All three were synaesthetes
(duh!). Two definitely had multiple types of synaesthesia, while we can only
assume that the one type of synaesthesia that Lewton had was not an isolated
phenomenon, because it is the norm for synaesthetes to experience more than one
variety. Two of the men definitely had grapheme-colour synaesthesia (Nabokov
and Shereshevskii both gave detailed descriptions) and all three experienced
types of synaesthesia associated with graphemes (letters or numbers). One
should take care not to overstate the significance of three people all having
grapheme-colour synaesthesia, as it is an unusual characteristic, but not
nearly as rare as some second-rate scientists have claimed. Nevertheless, I feel
that I’ve identified a pattern in common with these fascinating famous men. You
could call it a syndrome. I wouldn’t. You could call it a neurodevelopmental
pattern and point to genetics as the origin, but I wouldn’t want to overlook the
effects of a boy’s place in society. One could argue that these three
individuals were nothing more peculiar than highly intelligent, but that would
beg the question of whether synaesthesia is that common among the very bright.
You could call my pattern a collection of coincidences. I disagree, because
when I consider the biographies of some other famous synaesthetes, the pattern
appears to be confirmed. Do you want to know what I think is the most
intriguing trait that these three men had in common? It’s one of the more odd
and scientifically unexplored varieties of synaesthesia, thought by some
researchers to be possibly linked with social cognition. What peculiar mental
experience is or was common to the novelist Nabokov, the memory genius
Shereshevskii, film producer Val Lewton, the fictional child movie character
Amy, troubled young Jani Schofield, the enigmatic American child diarist Opal
Whiteley who was most famous in the 1920s, and also the author of this blog
post? Buy my book and find out!
The Mysterious Mind of Opal Whiteley: Four Unique Lives
Compared.
by Lili Marlene
Publisher: Smashwords.
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