Maps to Anywhere

The essays in Maps to Anywhere plot terrain that is at once familiar yet subtly strange. Writing on subjects ranging from his family to the origin of the barbershop pole, Bernard Cooper digs into the glimmering surface of the southern California landscape, observing the collision of the American Dream with the realities of everyday life. From the fragments, he discovers landmarks by which he attempts to make sense of contemporary America. "This set of essays captures the open-ended, rootless feel of modern life.... (These) dazzling, elusive shards (are) crafted with precision. -- Publishers Weekly" "An astonishing collection of daring and highly evocative texts (which, ) dictated by Cooper's love of language, his reverence for memory and the quirky shapes experience takes, and arranged according to the rhythms of reunion, expand the notions of what fiction can be. -- PEN/Hemingway Award Committee" "When (an) author has this much intelligence, verbal dexterity, warmth, and honesty, we can safely predict we will be reading him with relish for years to come". -- Phillip Lopate "The images Bernard Cooper conjures up in Maps to Anywhere become quickly stated poems or paintings whose surfaces are dazzlingly luminous... I enjoyed this book very much". -- Ann Beattie