Ardorous Map of Ada's Adventful Life

http://wordie.org/lists/ada-or-ardor-vladmir-nabokov


http://www.librarything.com/work/8400

Cognitive Maps

Literal and Sonic Terrains

by Enrique Ramirez

Those who have a general understanding of maps and international borders may be confused when reading the opening chapters of Vladimir Nabokov's bloated masterpiece Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969). One may notice that locations in the book ("Canady", "Mayne") bear a phonological similarity to places we notice when looking at a map ("Canada", "Maine"). In fact, the book has a distinct Amerussian flavor to it. It is as if Nabokov took a mercator projection of the world and folded it longitudinally -- the desired effect would be that some cities and features in Russia would be grafted on to North America. The superimposition of these two maps creates a new type of cognitive map -- a personal geography that invokes Nabokov's family roots in Czarist Russia as well as his fascination with American culture. Thumb through Lolita (1954), and as you listen to Humbert Humbert's transcontinental jaunt, you are in fact listening to a topographical description of then-contemporary American culture.

Texts of all kinds enjoy a certain status as a type of map. They not only act as a historical document, but they give an all-too subjective read on a particular landscape. The idea that a text is a kind of map (and vice versa, that a map is a kind of text) was definitely on Michel de Certau's mind when writing The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). To say that the book is about the quotidian strays off the mark. The book is about raising the quotidian, elevating the particularities of everyday existence -- a process that ostensibly reveals several common currents. It is as if de Certau is cracking the code of an impossibly complicated Enigma machine.

This process invokes a seemingly disconnected set of analytical tools. At some points, the text reads like a literary-theoretical exegesis. At other instances, it dwells on semiology and anthropology, as well as geography. However, de Certau's irreverence is such that one can take the varied analytical touchstones and apply them to other types of cultural products. In effect, The Practice of Everyday Life enables us to deploy a theoretical toolkit that allows for reading any type of cultural production as a spatial phenomenon -- in other words, a map. As Nabokov's books are a form of cognitive mapping, so are relics of popular culture.....

http://www.aggregat456.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

Map of Roberto Bolaño's Works

What a fascinating map this is!!! If you haven't read Roberto Bolaño, you should, 'The Savage Detectives', '2666', Nocturno en Chile...phenomenal!








http://quarterlyconversation.com/roberto-bolano-the-geometry-of-his-fictions
Check out this review, "Roberto Bolaño: A naive introductions to the geometry of his fictions" by Javier Moreno.

Another great map; a big fan of the Marseilles deck!

http://fourhares.com/tarot/noblet_tree.html

From there to where?

Lost in translation; perhaps one of the most underrated films in the last decade. Perhaps one of Billy Murray's best performances ever....More importantly; in line with the them of this blog; how divergent our paths are and the choices we make in terms of what paths we traverse or choose to cross...or is the map pre-ordained...perhaps there is no free will as regards the Map only our decision as to which corner we turn at each cross road...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s6g27hsuws&feature=related

Another Strange Map

After having read several of Milorad Pavic's innovative novels this summer, I was truly delighted to find that someone else had mapped out the long strange history of the 'Dictionary of the Khazars'. One of the most fascinating treaties on the monotheistic power houses of the world as we know it, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, this is truly one of the most fascinating books I have ever read...or dictionary?!!!
Check out this fantastic map of the lexicon and its' characters...This would have been fantastic to have had at had while I was reading it...!!!
http://www.blueblanket.net/Steph/Record/khazars.htm

So Alive

Reading several reviews of Ryan Adam's latest album 'Cardinology', and viewing some videos from YouTube of Adams and the Cardinals on Letterman I was reminded of a 'So Alive' 01/05/04 performance I watch late one night. Significant turning points of the soul, (yes they've happened while watching Letterman several times....enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70wOxS12Bdo