Creative Writing: Week 8

This week in creative writing we started the first half of the book "Maps to Anywhere" by Bernard Cooper. This is a series of essays written about his life. He uses humor as well as vivid description to talk about his life and significant memories he has. I will talk about a couple areas in the book that I found interesting and why I enjoyed the passages.

The first section that I enjoyed was called "Capiche?". The main thing I took away from this passage was one simple sentence which I found very profound. It reads, "But lies are filled with the modulations of untranslatable truth, and early this morning when I awoke, birds were restless in the olive tress." I thought that this was a beautiful sentence that read almost like poetry. It was quite mesmerizing to read.

The next section that I enjoyed was "The Biggest, Most Beautiful Balcony in the World". In this section I loved how it was titled, even though the point of it was that it was not the biggest and most beautiful balcony. He was not satisfied. He wanted something bigger and grander. He wanted a more "ornate balcony to gaze up at". You can really feel how unsatisfied he is.

My favorite section of the whole first part was the larger section called "The Wind Did It". This is a series of essays revolving around him and his father. On page 48 he said that he could divide his fathers history into three phases. I liked how he stated this. You do not usually divide your parents like into phases. The other thing that I loved about this section was the humorous banter between him and his father. My favorites were the one about the trip to Machu Pichu and the discussion about the mole on his arm.