Maps to Anywhere

      First of all, I wanted to talk about the idea of a book of small nonfiction essays.  This is the first of these types of books that I have read and I love the way each story is its own yet they all work together to form the overall idea of each character mentioned.  It is like each little scenario had its own story line yet showed Bernard Cooper and his family in different situations thus revealing their true characters.  I think this is a great way to go about writing a book if you are focused on defining the characters.

      "Say ""Cheese"" was a very interesting short story in Maps to Anywhere.  It is random and has nothing to do with anything and is just thrown into the mix which makes it unique.  "Perhaps photography is the cockroach of art forms, obdurate, common, multiplying, destined to outlive us and inherit the future."  This quote really stuck out to me because it made me realize how important photography really is in our society.  Since humankind began we have wanted to capture a moment.  First we painted it with the colors retrieved from squished berries, then from a paintbrush and canvas, then from a huge box that gave us a fuzzy representation in black and white, and now we have cameras that can capture every color and texture imaginable.  Just like the quote says photography has always been here since we had the technology for it and it will continue to expand and evolve into a more high-tech system because humans always want to remember something.  I think that Cooper wrote this based off experience.  His entire book is a sort of photograph.  Instead of a picture he uses words, but he still uses art to capture moments just as a photograph does. 

       My favorite section out of the book is "House of Cards."  In this section Cooper discusses visiting his dying brother's nurse's home.  Throughout the rest of this section Cooper discusses his brother's condition and how his brother has not much longer to live.  Cooper used to entertain his brother every Saturday while their mom disinfected Gary's room.  Cooper would try to entertain Gary so as to keep his mind off of the fact that he was dying and no one could do anything about it.  Later on, Cooper and his father visit Martin's, Gary's nurse, home and discover that the home is hanging off a cliff and is supported by a couple of thin beams instead of ground.  "Anna shivered, hugged her ribs.  "If I thought about it," she said, "I'd never get to sleep.""  Anna, Martin's wife, has to keep her mind off of the idea that she and her home are being supported by a couple of pieces of flimsy wood that could break at any minute or she would go crazy.  This reminds me of Gary.  "Gary must have felt as though he were living in a house of cards, that the merest breath, the wrong move could set in motion a chain reaction which threatened to topple everything solid- the lintels and beams of our stucco house, his own bones."  It makes sense if you think of Gary as similar to Martin's house.  Gary is so nervous about those little beams of health holding him to earth breaking that he needs a distraction being Cooper.  

         Along this same idea, Bernard Cooper makes Martin out to be a great help to Gary.  If you think of this passage that makes sense as well.  Martin is used to living dangerously in his home where at any moment he could fall off the cliff so he is able to relate to Gary who at any moment could be torn from the little protection he has and die.  I believe this is why Martin is able to help Gary more than anyone else and have the compassion necessary to help someone else's dying child.  

Fiction Packet 3

      "When It Rains It Rains A River" jumped out at me not as much for its symbolism and story line, but because of its sentence structure and diction.  "Us brothers, we love mud.  Mud, us brothers, we can't get us enough of mud."  It is almost as if the author takes a word or phrase out of the previous sentence and finds a place for it in the next sentence and continues to do this throughout the story.  This lends a sort of pattern to the story that is a distraction to the overall meaning, and done so on purpose I believe.  Also, as far as sentence structure, the sentences seemed to either be very short and choppy or separated by a plethora of commas.  This idea is unique but somewhat hard to read and by the end I am still unsure of the symbolism of "Girl" and the girls within "Girl." 
      I absolutely loved reading "The Falling Girl."  As far as sentence structure and diction the story was rather normal, but the message I received from it was impeccable.  ""You have your entire life before you," they told her, "why are you in such a hurry? You still have time to rush around and busy yourself.""  This quote I believe is the key to the story.  The author was trying to get at the idea that most 19 year olds, the age of the girl falling off the skyscraper, have.  The girl, who is later joined by many other girls, jumps off because she wants to reach the party at the bottom.  On the way down she is confronted by many people who try to help her and try to get her to simply enjoy life because it doesn't need to be one big rush to the finish line.  While falling she sees other girls falling and is more concerned with how her dress compares to them then the fact that in reality they are falling to their death because no one survives a trip off a skyscraper.  
        Continuing on with "The Falling Girl,"  as the girl nears the bottom she is spotted from a window by a man and his wife.  Strangely, by the time she reaches the bottom she is an old woman at the end of her life when she started at the top as a 19 year old girl with her entire life before her.  The skyscraper is supposed to symbolize a persons life.  The girl wanted to go straight to the party and skipped the floors like the party floor and the work floor.  She was so focused on the end picture that she loses all that was in the middle, what life is actually made of.  She reaches the end realizing that she never really lived, but simply died.  ""At least down here there's an advantage," observed the wife, "that you can hear the thud when they touch the ground.""  In the end the girl lived a small part of her life to just jump off a skyscraper, pass all the real aspects of life, and hit the ground like the rest of them, regardless of who's dress was prettier.  This story told me that we should just live for the now because we all end up in the same place in the end,  6 feet under.  It is just how we get there that counts.