A James Joyce drawing of Leopold Bloom. Source.
When he taught James Joyce's Ulysses at Cornell, Vladimir Nabokov used to draw a map of Dublin to show Leopold Bloom's journey, explaining that knowing some Dublin geography was useful to understanding what was going on.
A website I read about a few days ago maps that journey, along with other fictional journeys. The website in question is Reading Maps, and it maps travels in Moby Dick, Ulysses and other fictional works.
Mark Frauenfelder, writing for the latest issue of the invaluable newsletter Recomendo, explains:
"Reading Maps plots the routes characters travel in novels and films — you can trace the Pequod’s ocean path as it chases Moby Dick, or Victor Frankenstein’s pursuit of his monster from Geneva to the Arctic. Hundreds of journeys are mapped so far, sortable by setting (Sea, Overland, River, Rail, Survival, and more), and each one breaks the story into stops you can follow one at a time: where a ship or train left from, and what happened there. Since the stops follow the plot, the site will happily spoil the ending if you haven’t finished the book."
Pretty cool!
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