Rue Monge / Rue des Écoles. Paris. Flickr photo by besopha.

In December 2015 I read a stunning novel, Viviane, by the first-time writer Julia Deck. It was originally published by the most prestigious publisher of France, Éditions de Minuit. Viviane is the story of a madwoman, or not, in any case, a woman who is recently divorced, with one little daughter.

You said no, I’m the one who’s leaving. Keep everything, I’m taking the child, you won’t need alimony. You moved out on October 15, found a babysitter, extended your maternal leave for health reasons, and on Monday, November 15–yesterday–you killed your psychoanalist.

This a dark story of a thin mind line, oscillating on the verge of the abyss. It’s perhaps a noir, complete with a police detective. Viviane walks around Paris shadowing her husband, and while reading a took note of the places–some familiar– she visits. Then I found batchgeo.com, a nice website where with the input of the list of actual places and I got an embeddable Google map of the itinerary, which by the way, I’d like to replicate as soon as I’m there (which is not so soon). I published everything on this blog, together with the map “Viviane shadowing her husband”.

Mapping a Novel

The visited places are:

Place, City, Country
rue des Ecoles, Paris, France
rue Linné, Paris, France
rue des Arenes, Paris, France
rue Monge, Paris, France
rue de Navarre, Paris, France
place Saint Medard, Paris, France
rue des Carmes, Paris, France
rue Pot de Fer, Paris, France
rue du Roi de Sicile, Paris, France
pont Saint Michel, Paris, France
Conciergerie, Paris, France

Now, I got an email from batchgeo.com, saying that I have gone over the views limit for that map, and they will probably shut it down. But they haven’t yet. In fact they have been very kind with my naive mapping effort. Now, the surprising fact is, I goit over one thousand (yes, 1,000) views in three years. Ain’t that amazing? This is no deepfake nor any viral meme, but a map of places that inspired me. It’s still there, for some time.

Wonders of the Internetz.

View Viviane in a full screen map

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Antonio Vantaggiato
av@qmail.com