By Katy Rosen
Summer 2017 Intern
Synesthesia is generally described
as a neurological crossover of the senses. Essentially, the stimulation of one
sense causes the experience of another. In his autobiography, author Vladimir
Nabokov wrote that his synesthesia caused his brain to conjure colors when he
heard different letters and sounds.
In Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve, data journalist Ben Blatt seeks
to learn more about the Russian-American author, as well as other famous writers,
by quantifying
their writing styles. Blatt created a database of text from twentieth-century
classics and bestsellers to discover patterns within great writing. By
analyzing the novels of popular writers, Blatt created an extensive library of
data to draw from.
One general trend he found was that
shorter opening sentences and fewer adverbs are two characteristics of many
popular novels. Other findings were more specific. For instance, Danielle Steel
mentions weather in the first sentence of 46 percent of her 92 analyzed novels,
and Jane Austen’s top three most-used words were civility, fancying and imprudence. Fancy that!
Based on Blatt’s title, I bet you
can guess one of Nabokov’s trends. Blatt found that Nabokov “used the word mauve 44 times more often than the
average writer in the past two centuries.” This makes a lot of sense, given his
synesthesia. I wonder which words caused Nabokov to see mauve?
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