Unabashedly Bookish

[#1]

I've spent the past few years writing The Fourth Part of the World, a work of nonfiction that recounts the history of one of the greatest maps of all time: the Waldseemüller map of 1507, which gave America its name. But in telling the story of this one map, which survives in one sole copy, bought by the Library of Congress in 2003 for $10 million, I've also tried to tell the much larger story of how, over the course of several centuries, from about 1200 to 1500, Europeans gradually managed-haltingly, irrationally, brilliantly, daringly, ruthlessly -- to explore and imagine their way toward a picture of the world largely as we know it today.

Almost every time I mention that this is what I've been working on, the reaction I get is the same. "I love old maps," people say.

So what is it about old maps? What makes them so irresistible? At some level, I think, it's that when we come face-to-face with an old map we realize, consciously or unconsciously, that we're being offered a rare glimpse of a kind of alternate reality -- a vision of the world that's at once familiar and strange. "The past is a foreign country," the novelist L.P. Hartley famously wrote in the opening lines of The Go-Between (1953); "they do things differently there."

This goes a long way toward explaining the appeal of old maps. They're a record not just of where we are in the world but also of the places we've been -- on the planet and in our imaginations. They help orient us not just in space but also in time. What consistently enthralled me as I wrote The Fourth Part of the World was just how kaleidoscopic a vision of both geography and history old maps provide. Stitching together the disparate efforts of religious thinkers, far-flung missionaries, itinerant merchants, classical scholars, power-hungry political rulers, ambitious sailors, and many others, old maps are a reminder that people have always been doing what we're still doing today: trying to make sense of our place in the world.

[#2]

OK, I do love old maps!   I have books of them that are relevant to other things I'm interested in, history, the story of immigrations to this country, and movement within it, global politics, the location of things in cities I've lived in or visited - like literary locations in London, for instance,

New maps are really a necessity, too, since everything from interstate highway routes to national borders seem to undergo change with great rapidity in our own era.    I keep National Geographic maps and city maps and maps of wine routes or scenic drives with intriguing little turn-offs.   

And fictional maps?  They are great to have as one imagines oneself through the landscape of a book.   I adore authors who add maps to their books, and never fail to flip back and forth to be sure I'm 'seeing' a scene in the right location. 

I've relocated freqently during my adult life, and left the small town where I spent  part of my growing up years far behind.   So maybe I have a particular interest in always wanting to know where I am, in time and space and in my own little part of history.   In both a literal and metaphoric sense, I'd truly be lost without maps. 

[#3]

Whether I follow the Brothers Grimm on the Fairy-Tale Road map of Germany or explore Old Monterey with a walking tour map in hand, whether I am given a Taiwan Tourist map by a Travel Bureau agent or grab a Santa Clara Valley Bus & Rail map from the shelf on the bus, I feel as if every map is a gift. A gift that legitimizes my surroundings or invites me to visit far away places. A gift that deserves to be stored on my bookshelf, even if I never use it or even if it is obsolete. A current cruise map of Alaska thrills me as much as a forty-year old National Geographic map of “The Peoples of Mainland Southeast Asia.” I trace the slick surface of my accordion-style folded plastic map entitled “Streetwise Manhattan” hoping that someday I will go there; I cherish the disintegrating map of Hadrian’s Wall, though it reminds me of the time I got lost in a field of unwelcoming cows. 

Many years ago I had a map of the sky. It gave names to the stars I gazed at at night. It sorted undefined points of light into constellations I could imagine. In history classes I followed Caesar and Odysseus and Alexander the Great as they conquered long distances. I watched names change on the African Continent while I observed the rigid lines of borders and the meandering flow of rivers. And now, as I sit on the sofa, I like to twirl the globe on my coffee table or open “The Essential Atlas of the World” and stare at its pages through a magnifying glass. “Mar del Plata. Montevideo. Porto Alegre.” A map never disappoints. 

[#4]

Bookwoman and Sunltcloud, and everyone really, should pick up Toby's book. It's absolutely fascinating. Not only the origin and influence of the Waldseemüller map, but the entire perception of the globe and its bounderies is just wild to read about. Oh, and the character, Prester John is not to be missed!