Maps To Anywhere

This book was slightly confusing to me.  It seems to just be a collection of short stories that tell about his background and family and history.  I don't exactly understand what the stories have to do with maps.  On page 37, the narrator uses terms associated with maps to describe Mrs. Mazel, stating that her topography amazed him.  Throughout the short stories, that seems to be a the theme for the writer.  He is frequently associating maps with every day life and memories from when he was a child.  Also, with the ways in which he tells the history of the Earth and other details about it, it seems like he is trying to make maps of the world come to life through the telling of stories.  It seems like he is trying to make it all feel real to the reader.  Truthfully, it was rather difficult for me to follow the stories because of how much he jumped around to different times and different places.  It could work for others as a way of keeping things from getting dull, but I found it hard to really indulge in what the writer was trying to portray with all of his stories.

Fiction Packet 3- Peter Markus

The work I would like to talk about is from Peter Markus's "The Singing Fish."  There are three short stories that are all related that use a very simple style of text.  There is a lot of repetition of words in each of the three stories.  I think the theme here is to use words to compare to tangible things to make them feel tangible for a visual effect.  In the second story at the very end, he is talking about pictures drawn on the side of a cave but he is calling them words.  He says, "Our hands, us brothers, we keep looking with our hands, and we do not stop looking until the words themselves- mud and fish, moon and river, brother and girl- they become bones."  They way that actual objects are compared to words seem to be portraying that these objects are created with the use of words and the way they are put together.  The moon and river and brothers and girl are created from the words of Peter Markus and I believe that they way he writes is trying to point out to the reader that you can create anything with your words.  They may look like simple text on a piece of paper, but the way you utilize them can paint of picture of meaning by the way you use them together.

Another thing I would like to point out is that in his first story, "When it Rains it Rains a River," I liked how he used the phrase, "We like to make mud, in the rain, out of the dirt."  Although this is a very simple sentence, it causes the reader to visualize these brothers running in the rain and tearing up the dirt.  The writer is using his words in a way that causes implications of what is going on which provides imagery for the reader.  Simple, yet effective.