American literature is a celebration of literary regions

December 14, 2023 5:21 AM

The geographic locations of 1,001 novels set in the United States.

[Archive link]

Literary geography is a thing. People think about it popularly and academically, publishing journals and books on the subject, and sometimes folks encounter the concept through fantastical geographies.

posted by cupcakeninja (27 comments total)

I grew up engaging with fiction via maps, whether included in the book itself, or hunting down an atlas or map to see where things were happening. Some of the first nonfiction books I remember owning were "literary geographies" of one sort or another (Karen Wynn Fonstad!), and I've done various kinds of related visits to sites over the years. Some of my favorite books on or adjacent to the subject in adulthood include Hughes' Literary Brooklyn and Edwards' Writing Rome.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:27 AM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Scrolling around my portion of the map reminds me of J. Gordon Coogler's immortal words:
Alas for the South! Her books have grown fewer--
She never was much given to literature.
posted by mittens at 5:31 AM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I remember first reading "Alas, Babylon" as a kid and getting a minor thrill at the mention of my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. Of course, it was in reference to it being nuked, but still...
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:05 AM on December 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

This could go on and on. There are so many more books you could add here in just my state of NC alone
posted by thivaia at 6:51 AM on December 14, 2023

Direct link to map. Note this is a map of the 1001 books the the opinion writer chose to read, not some representative sample.

I'm reading Death Comes for the Archibishop right now and it's enchanting. Also the most New Mexico book it's possible to imagine. It's fun reading something so local about a place you used to live.
posted by Nelson at 6:57 AM on December 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

Oh dear, the map is a little off when it comes to Florida. It lists Rum Punch as set in Miami, but the map points to a spot in the Panhandle halfway between Pensacola and Panama City.

This is an interesting link overall, though. Thanks for the post!
posted by May Kasahara at 7:05 AM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Excellent, thanks!
posted by chavenet at 7:14 AM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Being someone who's fascinated by maps and who lives near where a lot of stories are set, one of my pet peeves is when an author gets the local geography wrong. If it was so important that you set your story here, the least you could do is get the relative locations of towns and cities right.

On the other hand, it's so awesome when an author establishes their local cred by not messing locations up.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:29 AM on December 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

This is great. I really appreciate that she uses newer authors and authors of color as well.

In my case, I was always pointed to Eudora Welty (less famously, Walker Percy and Hodding Carter). Welty's stuff didn't catch me when I was young because that slow, early 20th century, post-bellum society had disappeared, and I was a kid from the 80s and 90s. But when I was a little older, I realized that the people in her novels were still very real -- still the Delta.

It used to be my ambition to write a new Novel of Place for my town, but I think I'm the wrong person to do it -- too white. Well, we do what we can.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:59 AM on December 14, 2023

Glad to see Dinaw Mengestu's excellent novel set in DC, "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears," on the map. I've read some but not all of the DC books listed, and look forward into reading the rest. Thanks, OP!
posted by wicked_sassy at 8:04 AM on December 14, 2023

This is really neat, but they're missing Anatomy of a Murder set in the eastern UP of Michigan and The Man With the Golden Arm set in the area of Chicago that is now known as Wicker Park. I read the latter novel about 45 years after its release when I lived a little south of the neighborhood that the it was set in and it looked and felt exactly like it did in the story. A scant few years later and that neighborhood would be all chain coffee shops, fashion stores, and restaurants. But it was pretty awesome to wander that neighborhood while reading the book and still see the same dive bars, cop shops, little Polish restaurants, palm reading joints, etc.
posted by NoMich at 8:23 AM on December 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

I am disappointed to see the wrong Kesey novel representing Oregon. “Cuckoo’s Nest” is a great book, but the setting has always struck me as incidental. “Sometimes a Great Notion” is an unparalleled description of Oregon logging country and culture. It’s still the best way to explain why parts of this state are so angrily backward.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 8:24 AM on December 14, 2023 [8 favorites]

So, if you want to exist outside the written word, move to Nevada but stay out of Vegas?

Got it.
posted by The Power Nap at 8:34 AM on December 14, 2023

The big hole in the map for Nevada is remarkable although to be fair, there's not a lot of people there. Some though! And plenty of interesting history. Here's a bunch of possible books, not sure how many are novels.
posted by Nelson at 8:44 AM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Direct link to map.

Even with all ad-blocking off, this comes up as a completely blank page for me in Firefox. Please tell me this isn't one of those sites that only work in Chrome.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:51 AM on December 14, 2023

I just tried, and the direct link works for me in Firefox and Chrome on a PC, and in Firefox and Safari on a Mac. It did load significantly more slowly in Firefox on the PC than any other browser/system I tried, to the extent that I started to wonder if it was going to load at all.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:35 AM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

It worked for me in Firefox on Windows after a long wait to load.

I was expecting it to reflect the US population density map but it actually seems to have a lot more in the mid-West. Not sure if that reflects her taste, or US literature in general, or just the existence of the Western as a genre.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:59 AM on December 14, 2023

I am disappointed to see the wrong Kesey novel representing Oregon. “Cuckoo’s Nest” is a great book, but the setting has always struck me as incidental.

Sure, but I was happy to see Beezus & Ramona as the first book listed as representing Portland.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:03 AM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Please tell me this isn't one of those sites that only work in Chrome.

It's not.
posted by Nelson at 10:16 AM on December 14, 2023

Anybody else having trouble with the map in their phone browser? I can't get it to work.

I both love and hate narratives set where I've lived. My negative reactions are, of course, partly about getting things wrong; but unless the writing is very, very good I find it distracting in a "violation of the suspension of disbelief" sort of way.

Most recently I read Shutter by Romona Emerson, a paranormal thriller set in the Navajo Nation (Emerson is Diné) and Albuquerque.

In that case, I found her portrayal of Albuquerque very different from my experience, but mostly in a good way. I mean, there are very few people who live that downtown urban existence here — the main character works (APD crime scene investigator's office), lives (sanitarium cum mental hospital cum condos; this actually exists), and parties (at one of the very few clubs) downtown, so that was sort of niche and uninteresting compared to say, a depiction of life in the nearby Barelas neighborhood which would have been much more interesting — but the other parts, the bigotry against Native Americans, was instructive (and dismaying).

Back in the day, Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima, Nichols's Milagro Beanfield War, Hillerman's Leaphorn/Chee books, and Cather's Death Comes to the Archbishop accounted for much of the regional literature from here that existed firmly on the national stage, but these days there's so much more. Which is wonderful! But sometimes a little weird.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:41 PM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

“Sometimes a Great Notion” is an unparalleled description of Oregon logging country and culture

I came here to say exactly this.
posted by neuron at 9:36 PM on December 14, 2023

I guess there is a limit of one book per author, otherwise there would be a lot more Faulkner and DeLillo and Twain and Cather . . .
posted by yinchiao at 10:07 PM on December 14, 2023

By the way, there is a fun tool to find books set near you (or in any given US locale), at:
https://crossword-solver.io/books-set-around-america
posted by yinchiao at 10:16 PM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

(Reminder that urls aren’t automatically turned into links, but can easily be made linkable (thus contributing to site accessibility) by using the “link” button in the quick-access edit buttons immediately below the comment input window. (The link button is the one on the far right of the row of buttons just under the comment box.))
posted by eviemath at 6:09 AM on December 15, 2023

Somehow fitting that the book representing the cultural backwater of my upbringing is a trashy romance novel. Recognizing the place name in the title, I picked up a copy from one of those curbside "little libraries" in a bougie neighborhood in a big city, but felt kind of dirty reading it last summer.
posted by St. Oops at 8:58 AM on December 15, 2023

seems like if you can find nothing else for Dallas there's always DeLillo's "Libra"
posted by graywyvern at 11:21 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Difficult Women is one Michigan novel. Mixed on that choice.

"Silence is the cruelest of cruelties."

I just can't relate to that, how can silence be cruel when it's supposed to be golden....


ahhhh.
posted by clavdivs at 1:11 PM on December 15, 2023