Peter Turchi

Jan 24 2009

Maps of the Imagination, The Writer As Cartographer

Maps of the Imagination -by Peter Turchi

Maps of the Imagination has affirmed my long-held belief that every book should have pictures. With each turn of the page, new and fascinating maps, paintings, sketches, and diagrams are revealed. In some instances they directly support author Peter Turchi’s argument; in other cases, they’re shown just to captivate the reader (it usually works).

Peter Turchi has written a completely compelling discussion of how writers are in many ways the same as traditional geographic cartographers. When asked to name a cartographer, the names Blaeu, Mercator, Lewis, Clark, or Columbus might immediately come to mind. But what about Italo Calvino, Kate Chopin, Vladamir Nabokov, or James Joyce? According to Turchi, these writers are also cartographers – just as a geographic cartographer selects (and de-deselects) information to best achieve the purpose of the map, writers select only certain parts of reality to map a fictional, yet relatable, world.