Reader Response 4/2/2015 - Maps to Anywhere

I feel like these creative nonfiction essays that we are reading for class are too complex to simply be looked at objectively. I'm still astounded that such truth can be hidden within works that are supposedly nonfiction. I suppose that there exists truth in many forms, this is just the genre that I am most unfamiliar with, despite my literary experience; I've only dealt with creative essays a few times before in my entire life, with the previous being Running in the Family, and that was a work that we only read through and didn't focus too much upon. (It's also classified as a fictionalized memoir, which doesn't help much.) In that work, it seemed to blend such dreamlike elements that it was incredibly difficult to determine what was real and what was not. Blending magical realism alongside the elements inspired by the truth offers an interesting perspective, but it's still fictionalized, nonetheless. Unfortunately, this is the closest that I have gotten to creative essays.

The same holds true for a great number of works within Maps to Anywhere, as the nonfiction works often blend elements that seem unrealistic or magical, akin to magical realism, but are simply different perspectives or takes on the observation or account of something which, due to the natural gaps in the retelling, allows false elements to sneak in and the author is allowed to manipulate them as they will. A prime example of this exists in "The Heralds" in the first section. It may be possible that the narrator never saw a "stream of black birds soaring over the city", but this is not where the doubt comes in. The doubt enters the scenario when Cooper states that they were "endless" and "like winged pieces of letters, like a moving sign in Times Square, heraldic and quick and colossal". If the stream of black birds were truly endless, then there must be some infinite source of black birds, which is impossible, but this can be written off as an exaggeration. The usage of the similes comparing the stream of birds to the letters and the Times Square sign are literary tools and imply some degree of falsity, however because they are joined with the word "like" in the form of similes, it can be also written off. However, if they were written as metaphors, without the usage of the term "like", I still feel that they would hold true despite their literary falsity.

This is one thing that I have great trouble with when it comes to creative essays; the only rule that exists is that the meaning behind the words, not the words themselves, must be true, but that begs the question of what is true and what is not. Could this blog post be considered creative nonfiction? It's possible, because I feel as if what I'm writing here is true, but someone else might not know that and be confused about it. Even though this is a genre that should be very simple to understand, for me it is the exact opposite. The wordplay that exists in this genre is something that spices up the individual writings and, personally, adds to the confusion, but it's something that I will eventually overcome, given the time.