Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110429 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 246 pages

From Booklist
It's not uncommon to compare the writing of a story to the mapping of a world, but no one has so fully, or so seductively and rewardingly, performed as extended a meditation on this illuminating metaphor as Turchi. A fiction writer, anthologist, and the director of the MFA writing program at Warren Wilson College, Turchi parses with equal insight, knowledge, and elan the making of maps and the writing of fiction. Both involve purposeful omission; both require compression; both are subjective in their perspective, orientation, and emphasis; and both create illusions. Turchi's lively, idiosyncratic, and marvelously well-illustrated history of mapmaking (many cartographic quests are as quixotic as any in literature) is matched by reverie-inducing selections from Melville, Stevenson, Nabokov, Calvino, and Carver, as well as priceless musings on the Marx Brothers and the Road Runner. Ultimately, Turchi contrasts realistic and postrealistic approaches to storytelling, and concludes, "Reality is inexhaustible." Brilliant and pleasurable, Turchi's musing on our innate need to know where we are, where we might go, and why alters our perceptions of not only maps and fiction but also the nature of the mind's terra incognita. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Maps of the Imagination . . . is an extended metaphor--not as far reaching as, say, Moby-Dick, but remarkably and satisfyingly meandering." -- Speakeasy, Oct. 2004

"Peter Turchi’s associative style leaps from fanciful fiction to the most sensible of maps. . . ." -- New York Arts Magazine, November/December

"Turchi's book, like any good map, tells us where we are and urges us to discover more." -- Charlotte Observer, Sept. 24, 2004

About the Author
Peter Turchi is the Director of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is the author of the novel The Girls Next Door and the story collection Magician, and the coeditor, with Andrea Barrett, of The Story Behind the Story: 26 Stories by Contemporary Writers and How They Work and, with Charles Baxter, of Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Read the Text, Revel in the Illustrations
It's hard to know how to categorize this book: is it an art book or a book about writing? It's both, of course, and the text is very well-written, it's worth mulling over. But the genius of the book is its beautiful design and its inclusion of hundreds of illustrations. This is the kind of idiosyncratic book that drives bookstore staff mad - they never can figure out where to shelve it. The making of a map of the imagination is more than a metaphor, though thinking about "discovery and exploration" as metaphors for creativity is not exactly new. Beyond the metaphor, though, a writer's mapmaking is both necessary and practical - the mapping out of a work of fiction or of a poem, the actual exploration and plotting of a narrative arc, the sense that the writer is both guided by the mapmaking and providing a guide to his readers. Fascinating stuff, and truly beautiful and full of SO MANY extraordinary illustrations. It's one-of-a-kind, and worth purchasing. Pick it up and be seduced.

Left brain 'jumper cables' for the right brained
Cartography is an analytical science ... mathematical, temporal, evolving. Novels are literal explorations. Perceiving a common link between the technical cartography and the creative novel becomes a fascinating common ground. Ever wonder how a left brainer thinks? Turchi gives us a hint.

Turchi makes a living from his application of the understanding of the technical structure of novels ... cartography is his hobby. Right brainers make a living from the technical ... novels are the hobby.

The subtleties and enjoyable descriptions of the structure and theory of great novels are merged with the structure and theory of great maps. How we use language and data to convey structural information is common ground in Turchi's premise.

For this reviewer, a great map improves efficiency in getting from "A" to "B". Turchi is revealing in his observation that humans use maps to reduce an anxious uncertainty of the unknown. As one of those 'if I'm lost, get loster' types, I suppose I do enjoy the ' ... get loster' adventure. The same is true in enjoying the unexpected adventures in the great novel. Turchi's insight into natural human motivation to seek a clearing of the veil of uncertainty left me thinking down a whole other set of rabbit holes.

This book is a box of chocolates.

A Book for Writers and Map Lovers
This book defies genre. It is an examination of the correlation between writers and map-makers. If you love maps, and want to incorporate some of that passion into your writing, this is the book for you. I find myself coming back to it frequently, like a reference book on how to write the sort of story I'd like to read.

Especially interesting is the portion of the book devoted to the empty spaces on maps.

I can't resist Turchi's wonderful phrases, such as:

"...a blank on a map becomes a symbol of rigorous standards; the presence of absences lent authority to all on the map that was unblank."

Brilliant.

It will take you on a journey. And the book is lovely to look at and hold.