Analysis Of Rebecca Solnit's 'Seeing Isn T Believing'

Seeing Isn’t Believing Maps and literature are tied more closely than most people believe. A book guides a reader through a story, word by word, showing them the development of the authors work. Too often, maps are over looked for their seeming simplicity. People fail to see the research and story the cartographer has created, and in turn miss every step of the cartographer’s choice to exclude and include attributes and other such map features from the final projection. Every map tells a story, and each one special in its own depiction, but maps are also intertwined, showing parallels in time of very different but equally true realities. Maps are the genealogy of the landscape, drawing out evolution, and both Peter Turchi and Rebecca Solnit remind their readers that every map has a story; meant to be read in detail, so that space is seen more fully. This essay analyzes the choices cartographers make regarding map attributes, projection, and omissions in order to …show more content…
Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City is an amalgamation of maps and their blank spaces. “Just as a bookshelf can jam together widely different books, each book a small box opening onto a different world, so seemed the buildings of my city; every row of houses and shops brought near many kinds of abundance, opened onto many mysteries” (Solnit, 5) People look at a library with the uniform expectation there are books inside, similarly People choose to look at the bay area with pre conceived notions of “San Francisco values”. However there are mysteries to San Francisco and such maps as Solnit’s Green Woman Map and Right Wing Of The Dove Map connect the very different worlds of two maps to remind readers its all one greater story about the same space. “maps are fixed in time and include only features considered relatively permanent” (Turchi,