“When I first decided I wanted to be a writer, when I was 10, 11 years old, the books that I loved…came with maps and glossaries and timelines—books like Lord Of The Rings, Dune, The Chronicles Of Narnia. I imagined that’s what being a writer was: You invented a world, and you did it in a very detailed way, and you told stories that were set in that world.”—Michael Chabon, Interview with the AV Club

My undergrad thesis argued that world-building wasn’t just for fantasy and sci-fi writers—every tale has a setting, every tale creates a world in the reader’s mind—and it explored ways that drawing that world (visual thinking!) can lead to better fiction.

Some of my favorite “lit’ry” books are accompanied by maps.

A recent read, Donald Ray Pollock’s short-story collection, Knockemstiff, is set in the “real” town of Knockemstiff, right outside of Chillicothe, Ohio (30 miles from where I grew up—if you keep heading north on 23 you’ll get to Circleville). The book includes a nice hand-pencilled map by artist David Cain:

Lynda Barry’s Cruddy contains four maps. Here’s two of them:

And while it was a TV show and not a book, one of my favorite fictional worlds, Twin Peaks, was drawn by David Lynch for the pitch meeting:

Some writers use previously-made maps to help create their fiction: Melville used whaling charts, Joyce used Ordnance surveys of Dublin, and Pynchon used aerial maps.

Poking around the ‘net I found maps for Faulkner’s books, Treasure Island, and of course, Tolkien.

What other favorite books of yours include maps? Let’s get a big ol’ list going in the comments!

Just in case you wondered. Meeting her was a turning point in my creative life. And look: here’s a good portrait of her in the New York Times. Everyone go out and buy her new book next week.

this one is dedicated to lynda barry and her new book which looks amazing

pretty much a paraphrase of this page:

F*** this: Ernie Pook’s Comeek has been dropped from alternative papers all over the country — including the Austin Chronicle. I wondered last week where it went. Only good news is that now D + Q will post them online.

We’ll have to wait a little while until Drawn and Quarterly publishes the five-volume set of the complete run of Lynda Barry’s Ernie Pook’s Comeek, but in the meantime, there are a bunch of out-of-print collections out there…if you can find them. I’d like to start the week off by showing off a couple scans from two, GIRLS AND BOYS (1981), and EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD (1986).

* * *

BOYS + GIRLS was Lynda’s first book. Most of it is drawn in a scrawled, punky pen style — a crazy contrast to the fluid brushwork of something like ONE! HUNDRED! DEMONS! The strip was reformatted into a horizontal format, something that Chris Oliveros has emphasized will NOT be the case in the D + Q reissues.

Here I’ve restored her strip, “How To Draw Cartoons,” to its original square format:

Here’s a wacky clip of Lynda reading from the book in the the film COMIC BOOK CONFIDENTIAL:

And here’s a really cool photo of a poster advertising the book from around 1980.

* * *

EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD is a little more refined — it was Lynda’s fourth collection, and the drawings get better and better, but the content is still nutty and hilarious. The gems from this book are these little maps that serve as chapter dividers:

Here’s the strip “What Turns Men On”:

And the strip “How to Catch a Man”:

I found this King-Cat strip from John Porcellino to be a great match for them:

Like John P’s KING-CAT CLASSIX collection, I can only think that the five-volume Ernie Pook collection is gonna be nothing short of fantastic.

Eddie Campbell’s “Honeybee” comics from his wonderful book, The Fate of the Artist:

James Kochalka gets away with a tribute to his wife that if I drew it of mine would get me killed:

David Heatley chronicles the seasons of love:

And Lynda Barry draws her family:

Sappy, I know, but sometimes I am.

Has anyone read Cathy Malkasian’s Percy Gloom? New York Magazine ran an excerpt, and I am intrigued:

Also, Chris Oliveros at D+Q posted another page of Lynda Barry’s upcoming “What It Is”:

Beautiful stuff!

Just in case anyone else is interested in my other favorite female cartoonists: Renee French, Julie Doucet, Hope Larson, Alison Bechdel, Roz Chast, Lilli Carré, and Jessica Abel. I probably left a ton out, but those are the ones I can think of.

Who are your favorites?

During the (still-in-progress) move, I came across these doodles that Lynda sent me as part of a letter. Everything she does inspires me to create, so I thought I’d share these.

As a cartoonist, one advantage you have over prose writers is that after you publish your book, you can sell your original artwork in a gallery show for hundreds of dollars. This works out great financially for the artists, and at the same time works out great for the fans.

David Heatley recently posted an awesome concept diagram of a multi-media show he has in mind to do for his upcoming memoir:

Heatley’s memoir seems particularly suited to this kind of presentation — dig the home videos his father singing.

So anyways: sell your originals. Although few prose writers have taken advantage of the business model, I can see it working, especially for people who write first drafts in longhand. (Lynda Barry sells pages of her original calligraphic manuscript for Cruddy at very reasonable prices over ebay.) Who would mind this hanging on your wall?

I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to buy my original artwork, but you never know. I better start working bigger…on better paper!

Blessings on Tom Devlin’s head for posting these previews of Lynda Barry’s WHAT IT IS on the Drawn and Quarterly blog. I’ve only seen about 15 pages worth of it from the “graphic issue” of Tin House. The (official!) cover:

A fantastic excerpt which resembles part of a talk Lynda gave at Oberlin:

And finally, the cover for the sneak-preview D+Q is releasing for FREE COMIC BOOK DAY:

I really hope I can get my hands on this next Saturday.

My other rambles about how wonderful Lynda is, here.