Vladimir Nabokov

A Pale Fire Foreword "Word Cloud"

By William Dane, 4 October, 2020

Below is a "word cloud" of the Foreword in Pale Fire, where the relative size of each term indicates the relative number of times it shows up in the text, with articles (and any other terms indicated by the user) not counted. I made it using an app from wordle.net, with text pasted in via the following sequence: a screenshot of each spread in the Vintage e-book, then Adobe Acrobat file assembly and Character Recognition. I then deleted the pdf. If anyone's interested in seeing the same thing applied to the other components in the novel, and/or to the entire thing, just let me know. The process is not difficult but it does take some time.

The color set and font were options in the Wordle app. Some customization seems possible. The arrangement changes slightly when different options affect the letter spacing; it seems fairly arbitrary. 

Also a Google of Pale Fire wordle and other configurations did not yield any previous iterations, but if there are any out there I'd of course be interested in knowing where to find them. Thanks. 

PF Foreword "word cloud"

MARYROSS

3 years 5 months ago

Nice, William! Looks like a lot of work, even with an app.

It makes me want to create sentences, like with refrigerator magnets. For instance, reading left to right: "fellow left without line: Shade's manuscript"