©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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Review by James Neal Webb
Look at a map of the planet and consider the realities of the sixteenth century, a time when half the world truly was new. Venice, located at the northern end of the Adriatic Sea, was the crossroads of the world; to the north, the heart of Europe, to the east, the vastness of Asia, and the sea routes to the south led to the East and the Americas. Into this cradle of the Renaissance James Cowan acquaints us with Fra Mauro, a monk who has dedicated his life to creating a true map of the world.
As a mapmaker, Fra Mauro is a conduit for knowledge, greeting travelers, from the far-gazing sailor with salt still in his beard, to the bone-weary merchant dusty from the caravan's trail. They come to his door seeking to impart things geographic, but they end up leaving things more psychic than physic; to Fra Mauro's chagrin, the wealth of information imparted soon far exceeds the boundaries of any paper map.
This is as it should be, for Cowan as well as his protagonist understand that the world, our world, is carried internally. A Mapmaker's Dream is, then, about the mapmaker rather than the map. Fra Mauro is at times full of self-doubt, gnawed at by the frustration of never having traveled himself, and prone at times to self-loathing for just this reason. This story of his life is not about the mapmaker's craft then, no more than the story of yours is exclusively about your work.
Cowan lets you read between the lines as you piece together Fra Mauro's story. Though it's never mentioned directly, you can picture his strange visitors from the misty corners of the globe confirming the sketches he shows them in his room at the monastery at San Michele di Murano, then he picks up the story as they sit to tell the monk of their travels. And compelling stories they are, from stories of the legendary Prester John to the philosophical lives of headhunters; Fra Mauro finds the knowledge addictive, and his journey of the mind makes him a prisoner of the knowledge, just as surely as the traveler is a prisoner of his wanderlust.
History teaches us that while compassion for and acceptance of other ways of life occurs, it is, as today, not the norm. Yet it is in Fra Mauro's willingness to listen and learn A Mapmaker's Dream that we see some of the twentieth-century mind. Perhaps the victory of knowledge over innocence has nothing to do with the ages at all: perhaps it is timeless.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.