Maps of the Imagination: The Writers As Cartographer

by Peter Turchi

These meditations on an extended metaphor juxtapose a fascinating collection of maps with an equally fascinating assortment of literature: Dante, Calvino, Nabokov, Borges, Woolf. Turchi seldom allows maps to play a role much beyond metaphor, either in composition or in analysis, and metafictional studies like Moretti’s map of where Parisian Objects Of Desire lived, and where their writers lived, play less role in his imagination than Stevenson’s original sketchmap of Treasure Island. The book’s limited application to my immediate interests in spatial hypertext, alas, left it languishing half-read on my nightstand for nearly five years: bought 29 January 2006 and finished 12 January 2011. That’s an injustice to a fine book whose main failing is that it wasn’t quite the book I had in mind.