In a 1969 interview, Vladimir Nabokov declared that teachers of James Joyce’s Ulysses should ignore “the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings” and instead “prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.” For Nabokov, “any ass” could assimilate a book’s general ideas. It was the “sensual spark” created by a text’s uniquely combined details that truly mattered.

Swiss-Italian artist Vittorio Santoro shares something of this zeal for literary detail. The minimal forms and elliptical content of his drawings, actions, and