Imaginary real places

[mmcirvin]

Another good literary thread on Crooked Timber: John Holbo mentions the tendency of novelists writing about Africa to make up whole fictitious countries and massive shifts in geography, and postulates that you can't get away with doing this to the industrialized West any more. Dozens of people in the comments cite examples proving him wrong, and mentioning other fictional geographical dislocations.

I've seen some weird ones, often of the thinly-disguised-real-geography variety. John Updike set Roger's Version in a city that was obviously Boston/Cambridge with the serial numbers filed off, at a university that seemed to be a fusion of Harvard and MIT, but also explicitly mentioned Boston and Harvard as being someplace else. I think lots of mainstream authors do this kind of transparent roman à clef geography either as a way of disclaiming intent to defame somebody, or of disclaiming the desire to be held to absolute accuracy, or perhaps as a way of appearing to be doing such things as a coy insinuation that the story might be based on something real, much in the way that 19th century novelists would refer to the Baron N— or the year 18—.

Similarly, people on my friends list speak often of the cities of Los Santos and San Fierro.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...And then Timothy Burke suggests the extent to which Holbo is right (http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=130), and some of the consequences this can have.

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, in my soon-to-be-shredded novel, I made up the names of at least two towns in order to avoid direct comparison with the real-life counterparts. Also, I invented new names for the characters which were heavily based on people I knew. The primary reason was because if I kept using the person's or town's real name, I felt restricted to being factually accurate, instead of letting the plot develop on its own and allowing the characters and towns to become something else. Another reason I changed names was because I could come up with a clever name for town or person which reflected into the plot, sort of like the town of "Personville" in Red Harvest. A very secondary reason was because if anyone else ever reads this thing, they will know who these towns and people are unless I disguise it.

I can't speak for professional novelists who get paid, though.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That seems to be how it usually goes. I wrote a short story once in which I made up a fictional town loosely based on my father's hometown and environs for similar reasons.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the island state of San Andreas. I did a lot of travelling there recently, but, since I got into some trouble with the law upon arrive, I got out more or less as soon as I'd cleared my name. Bit of a crime problem. Crazy drivers.

I would add to the list the large number of fake universities that enroll (and employ) criminals and crime victims for the benefit of police and forensic dramas. Fortunately, it's easy to get permitted for parking at these schools, and it's a good thing because the main way for CSIs to know you're connected is via your parking sticker, as seen in a stunningly enhanced stillframe from an ATM camera.

Also, as a Seattlite, I'd like to point out 2 clever dodges to the rampant use of Vancouver BC as a fake Seattle or a Seattle-area northwest metropolis. "The Sentinel" created and set their show in a fake-o Washington metropolis called "Evergreen," while the writers of fanfic(!) for Highlander (nominally set in an unnamed city with a view of the Cascade mountains) call the town "Seacouver." Nice one. Props to Dead Like Me for deploying actual maps of Seattle, with a creditable use of local neighborhood names, when Dolores Herbig was discussing where to spend one's time trick-or-treating to maximize candy return.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

There's a certain amount of in-jokery that goes on too; for some reason nobody in that thread's yet mentioned H. P. Lovecraft's fictional New England, and all the consequent references to Miskatonic University and Arkham by other authors who aren't even writing in the Cthulhu Mythos.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the world would be like if CSI's image enchancing programs were real.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Most of my favorite examples already got mentioned in that thread: for instance, Arthur C. Clarke changing the geography of the Indian subcontinent in The Fountains of Paradise to put Sri Lanka (which he referred to by its old name of Taprobane) at the equator so he could put a space elevator there. In the real world, as he's been careful to note, the closest piece of land where one could put it would be in the Maldives (which are inconveniently flat).

Imaginary real places

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

I need to make a day trip to take photos of the hurricane damage down in St. Odo of Cluny Parish.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

A recent popular activity among Japanese anime fans is to find the locations used as models for the settings for various anime series. Some series use made-up towns based on real ones, and some use real locations. One of my recent favourites, Zettai Shounen, used a real small town named Tanna as the model for the fictional location "Tana" in the first half of the series, then used real Yokohama in the second half. This kind of thing seems like a lot of fun.

On a similar otaku note, I've been playing with Google Earth to map out where events in one of my favourite manga, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (read it!) take place. The author is obviously doing this story partly to give himself an excuse to draw run-down, overgrown and desolate version of places he likes. It's a lot of fun to put the hints together to try and figure out what happens where. Results are here.

[http://users.livejournal.com/erasmus__/]

It always drove me up a wall when D-- would talk about Mme B-- and Count R--

It's enough to make me want to hitchhike to Santa Vista

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Seems like half the authors do it so they can blow up Fake Town City Hall and not get investigated by the FBI