I recently read Light Action in the Caribbean, a short story collection by Barry Lopez, because (a) I really like the title and (b) I was curious what Lopez’s fiction writing was like since he is largely known for non-fiction. Honestly, I think I’ll stick to the non-fiction. The stories in this collection leaned towards a brutal realism that is not typically what I care for when sitting down to read.

There is one gem in the collection though. The final story, “The Mappist,” is an argument for the power that maps can have to an individual and society. The storyline is simple. The narrator searches for and eventually finds a reclusive cartographer and geographer who greatly influenced him in his education. The story culminates with a discussion between the cartographer and narrator, and it is in the cartographer’s words that we get insight into Lopez’s brain and his own feelings about what can be accomplished with a good map.

For context, the cartographer is referring to an extensive collection of maps of North Dakota (his home state) that he is working on.

“… I am obliged to shoulder the history of my own country. I could show you here the whole coming and going of the Mandan nation, wiped out in eighteen thirty-seven by a smallpox epidemic. I could show you how the arrival of German and Scandinavian farmers changed the the composition of the topsoil, and the places where Charles [an artist referred to previously] painted, and the evolution of red-light districts in Fargo – all that with pleasure. I’ve nothing against human passion, human longing. What I oppose is blind devotion to progress, and the venality of material wealth. If we’re going to trade the priceless for the common, I want to know exactly what the terms are.”

And later,

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking you, or I or anyone, knows how the world is meant to work. The world is a miracle, unfolding in the pitch of dark. We’re lighting candles. Those maps – they are my candles. And I can’t extinguish them for anyone.”