Maps To Anywhere

Bernard Cooper’s Maps to Anywhere was an interesting read for me. I was immediately drawn to it because I am a fan of short stories. As I read more and more of it I realized that this book fits into many categories (it was much more than just short stories). When researching this book I found out that the author actually won a fiction award for some of the essays. This book really highlighted the thin line between non-fiction and fiction. He admits "Everything I have told you is a lie. Almost everything."(20), in Capiche?, a fantasy of an almost romance in Italy. Ever since that story I found myself asking “Did this really happen to him? How much is he embellishing? Is this completely made-up?”. I found this to be an especially clever tactic to keeping my attention. In addition to fiction and non-fiction this book could be described as an autobiography, a collection of essays, prose poetry, a memoir. This multiplicity is another way the book keeps the reader reading.

I was also drawn to the language Cooper used to create his strong voice in Maps to Anywhere. I thought it fitting that in the first essay, Beacons Burning Down,  Cooper reveals “For almost a year I wanted to be the man who got to name the paint chips at Bromely’s Hardware” (5), because the rest of the book he paints such vivid imagery with his language. Not only in his use of color (“cool cerulean blue”(86)), but also in his arrangement of words, and his use of metaphor and comparison. I loved how easy he made it to picture and understand what he was talking about with descriptions such as “Lightning-bright spines flashed” (74), “dusty lamplight”(72), “bright braid of exposed copper”(67), “gems of oil on the surface of soup”(97), “archipelago’s Braille” (37), “Perhaps photography is the cockroach of art forms” (76). That coupled with his lyrical style of writing (“Time was a road that led to utopia”(96)) is what created his strong voice for me; a voice that gave a mysterious and dreamlike tone to the whole book.

I was talking to someone about this book that claimed they did not like it because they couldn’t find a point. They called themselves out immediately after admitting this, saying that maybe they were just trained to find a point. This got me thinking what exactly it was that Cooper was mapping; after all it’s kind of a bold statement to say something doesn’t have a point. With the right analysis you can make anything have a point, really. The most general observation would be that this book is about how Cooper found his place in the world through his experiences. Being an outsider is a theme throughout, one that is introduced in the first story: “My own name was problematic. While Jeff and Mary could go to the five-and-dime and find cups and wallets bearing their names – evidence that they belonged to a vast and accepted subset of humanity - Bernard was always out of the question.”(4). I think this book could also be said to be about the idealistic 1950’s view of the family, and how that breaks down when you take a closer look at the reality of day to day life. I think Cooper alludes to this often, but he talks directly about it in Leaving, in which he talks about the “statistical family”(84). Other themes include love and loss, which are shown most strongly in the stories about his brother. I think it was haphazard to say there was no point to this book. I think each person who reads this is going to come to a different conclusion about what the “point” was. For me it was easy to see Copper allowed many personal entry points by sharing his own experiences with his beautiful style of prose, and find it hard to believe someone could not relate to the themes he touches on that, I feel, most of humanity experience and share.