Maps to Anywhere: Intentions and Credibility

Throughout the duration of Maps to Anywhere, the narrator’s intention is to give the reader not only an imaginative and lyrical experience, but also the ability to decide whether or not to trust the narrator. Even in the title the word ‘anywhere’ connotes possibility, referring to the many potential emotional or intellectual responses to the prose. By calling the collection of prose ‘maps’, narrator is declaring the book’s status as a guide, which the reader can choose or not choose to follow.

 In “Capiche?” the narrator relinquishes his control over what his readers choose to believe by telling him/her, “Everything I have told you is a lie” (20). The narrator’s confession is underlined by the definitive statement of the first sentence: “In Italy, dogs say bow-bow instead of bow-wow” (19). However, the narrator alludes to the question of believability as he continues the sentence by saying, “…and my Italian teacher, Signora Marra, is not sure why this should be” (19). While the narrator’s initial diction asserts authority, he immediately retracts by including his fictitious teacher’s hesitance about the statement. The exchange between what may sound like true statements and those that are more questionable continue throughout “Capiche?”, creating tension between assertive truths and questions or fantastical images that draws the reader’s attention to the narrator’s credibility. His credibility comes with his intentions: “I honestly wanted to offer you something, something like the prospect of sudden love, or color postcards or chaotic piazzas, and I wanted you to listen to me as if you were hearing a rare recording by Enrico Caruso” (20). The authenticity of the work is aligned with the narrator’s desire to present the reader with ideas, images, and perspectives that illustrate the worlds in them, true or not, with a sense of sentimentality and sometimes sublime.

It is also possible that Maps to Anywhere is in conversation with Gary. In “Dream House,” the narrator writes, “I wanted those ads to convince my brother that people improved, that a sow’s ear could become a silk purse, light arise from beneath a bushel, and water turn to wine” (104). Throughout the book, the narrator transforms everyday happenings to beautiful dream-like images, using a change in tone to indicate the switch (as seen in “Capiche?”). By offering the mundane in sentimental ways, the narrator develops an intimate tone that might be reflected in his feelings towards his brother. These narratives, then, are like his “drawings of cities, intricate, hypothetical” that he gave to his brother “nearly every evening” (110). They are the narrator’s efforts to show the reader beauty that was absent in “the mothers of America [who] were so unmoved by their own sense of cadence that they had to rely on a book” (4). His credibility, then, rests within the intentions of the book rather than what is and what is not fact.