The book really is a chess board

"In Nabokov's fiction, chess-playing prowess is inseparable from eidetic prowess. . . .The striking ability to animate eidetic images is part of the key to Luzhin's (character from Nabokov's book The Defense) chess technique; he can lay out a chessboard in his mind and then set it in motion in order to visualize the outcomes of various strategems. . .The boy is blind to the world around him, but in the 'celestial dimension' where his chess moves are calculated, he sees all" (Dann 139). 

I get it! It's a chess board!! The whole book! I know we talked about it before, but I just get it now. The way Nabokov makes the reader jump from note to note, note to poem, note to commentary etc.  We, readers, are chess pieces.  When we try to read the book cover to cover, we are basically trying to play the game without any strategy-- like we are just trying to get from our end of the board to the other, ignoring rules and moving without art.  Nabokov leaves notes to direct the pawns (us) back and forth and back and forth, because he can foresee the next moves; the end, which is not really the end, I think; because in a way, we only seem to be played on one side of the chess board, but because this is a mirror game and a mirror book and dyslexia seems to run rampant, our reflection is probably playing the game too.  . 

I hope you watch the clip of the old guy playing chess with himself.  It reminds me of Kinbote in a way or Shade or both, since they are kind of one in the same (though I still like Kinbote better).