The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
by Reif Larsen
I had no idea when I opened this beautiful, quirky, and imaginative novel what awaited me–every page is embellished with hand-drawn maps, drawings, schematics, sidebars, and footnotes that follow up on some reference in the narrative. Supposedly the story of twelve-year-old T.S. (Tecumseh Sparrow) Spivet, map maker extraordinaire, the novel follows T.S. on his hobo trip from Montana to Washington, D.C. to collect the coveted Baird Award from the Smithsonian Museum. But the tale is so outlandish, so unbelievable, it holds all the power of an epic. And perhaps in the end, it is best to read the book that way.
All epic heroes come from a homeland that shaped and molded him or her and T.S. is not different. T.S. and his family live on the Coppertop, a ranch nestled against the Great Divide. T.S’s mother, Dr. Claire, is a dedicated scientist (and distracted mother) who seeks the never-seen tiger beetle. Dad is a throwback to the Old West–a man who speaks cowboy-ese, drinks whiskey, and watches old westerns in the settin’ room. T.S. has two siblings … or had. For the death of his younger brother Layton looms like a dark shadow over the Spivet’s lives. Gracie, his teenaged sister, tolerates her odd family–barely.
What sets T.S. apart is his genius for diagramming and mapping nearly every aspect of life. Some of his maps are ordinary–Scratch of the Nib, Walking Chart, Concentration of Litter in Chicago–; some, sublime–Identification of Cow Path Tiger Beetle Subspecies, Sound Drawing of Brahm’s Hungarian Dance No. 10. T.S.’s mentor, Dr. Terrance Yorn, has been submitting his work to the Smithsonian for some time and T.S.’s work has been published in journals such as Science and Scientific American–no one, however, suspects that the elegant graphics were drawn by a twelve-year-old. The labyrinth of T.S.’s mind (that’s another map!) is amazing (pun intended). He is curious and insightful–surely a genius. And perhaps this super human feat is what points in the direction of an epic reading of his story.
After first refusing the Baird, T.S. decides to set off on his own to claim the prize, certain that his family is better off without him: Dr. Claire is preoccupied, his father ashamed of him, sister Gracie is, well, a teenager, and Layton dead in a freak shooting accident. T.S. jumps (or rather grabs on by his fingernails) loaded with an unwieldy suitcase filled with mapping pens, notebooks, a sparrow skeleton, and other non-sequiturs. Almost magically, T.S. finds that the car on which he has stowed away hauls a motor home. And it is from the relative comfort of the camper that T.S. makes his way across country.
The trip is a series of misadventures that could (or could not) be true: T.S. enters a worm hole on the Great Plains; he discovers a Hobo Hotline number that is one easy phone call away from the destination of any railroad train in the U.S.; he encounters a ranting homeless man who wounds him severely; he joins the secretive Megatherium club; he is invited to the President’s State of the Union Address–only to skip out on it. This could all be simple fun, an unabashed rollick of a story … or these could be adventures every bit as significant as Odysseus’ encounters with the Cyclops, Scylla and Charibydis, and the Sirens. That just takes a little more effort than I was willing to on a hot and humid summer day … so perilous adventure tale it was.
Just started: Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears (And it’s good already after only a chapter.)
This is my symphony 