# Mistakes in Novels: A Geography Lesson **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 22, 2005, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647 "2005-07-22T15:04:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chance\_the\_Gardener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@Chance\_the\_Gardener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chance_the_Gardener)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/21 "2005-07-22T20:39:48Z")
In Douglas Coupland’s **Miss Wyoming** , one of his characters finds herself in Ohio, somewhere outside of Columbus. We follow the character to various parts of the state, and she covers distances in impossible lengths of time. She also travels through certain places en route to others, taking paths that make absolutely no sense at all. It’s been a few years since I read it so I don’t remember exactly how Coupland’s errors worked, but I do remember while reading it being struck by these glaring lapses in knowledge of Ohio geography. In Jules Verne’s **Master of the World** , our attention is briefly directed to a mountain village in Kansas. I don’t know this for sure, but I like to cut Verne some slack about this. The original Kansas Territory stretched to Pike’s Peak, but Kansas was reduced to its entirely flat state by the date its statehood in 1861, so I wonder if Verne was maybe working with old maps when he wrote his book in 1904. I know Verne was no traveler himself, having left France only once in his life, when he went to some nearby country, though I can’t remember which one. I know it’s not a novel, but in one of the **Die Hard** movies, you see the Empire State Building at the end of a street—but there’s no street that ends at the Empire State Building. You’d have to be driving _across_ a particular street if you were going to have your car pointed toward that building. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/22 "2005-07-28T00:12:55Z")
Oh for the LOVE OF… _Everything You Need to Know About Latino History, 2003 edition_ thinks that Jesse Helms is from South Carolina. Much as I’d like to foist that frog-looking jackass off on another state, he’s not from South of the Border. FACT-CHECK PEOPLE! ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/23 "2005-07-28T02:32:57Z")
Daisy in _The Great Gatsby_ makes reference to a character named “Blocks Biloxi,” and says he was from Biloxi, Tennessee. Biloxi is in Mississippi. It might be Fitzgerald’s mistake, or it might be intentional. ---
**Author:** ![KGS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90ced4/32.png) [@KGS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KGS)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/24 "2005-07-28T10:46:31Z")
The Jackie Chan film _Rumble in the Bronx_ takes place in New York City, but was filmed in Vancouver. Therefore, there are many shots of the city with BIG TALL MOUNTAINS in the background! Apparently the makers of _Independence Day_ believed it was possible to drive from NYC to Washington, D.C. in just under four hours, which is impossible even when there’s NOT an alien invasion going on. Conversely, in _12 Monkeys_, it takes two days for Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe to drive from Baltimore to Philadelphia. Another neat one I saw recently – in _The China Syndrome_, Jack Lemmon gets on the freeway at a very distinctive interchange. A few minutes later, he exits the freeway _at the same exact interchange_, going the opposite direction! Did he forget his wallet or something? (Trivia note: the freeway in question is in fact part of I-210 in the north San Fernando Valley, which was built in 1978 but didn’t open for another five years. MANY films from that time period use that particular freeway, including the TV show **CHiPs**.) Are we doing songs? If so, let me point out Tom Petty’s lyric to “Free Fallin’”: _“It’s a long day livin’ in Reseda/There’s a freeway runnin’ through the yard.”_ Excuse me, but THERE IS NO FREAKING FREEWAY IN RESEDA!!! Dammit! (Ok, maybe now I’m nitpicking…) ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/25 "2005-07-28T11:59:21Z")
> [@SpazCat](#): > > I like Adriana Trigiani’s novels, really I do, but she doesn’t know her way around the Appalachians outside Virginia. I’m reading _Milk Glass Moon_ right now, and before I even get to the first plot point, there’s a mistake on page 7! Just a quick hijack: Adriana’s dad Tony was a Knight of Columbus, and served as a District Deputy for several years when I was a DD as well. As DDs, we each attended state quarterly meetings in various parts of Virginia, usually rotating between Roanoke, Richmond, Tidewater, and Northern Virginia - that way, the theory went, the driving time for everyone would be even over the year. But of course, when you’re from Tony’s area, in the far southwest corner of Virginia, even the trip to Roanoke was long, and the trip to all the other locations was QUITE long. Tony was well known for gaining the floor on some pretext every single meeting, and then announcing for the record, “Worthy State Deputy, District 24, from the FAR southwest corner of Virginia, having travelled 293.5 miles, is here to report as follows…” Tony was a funny guy, a good friend of mine, and sorely missed. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Reloy3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c68b51/32.png) [@Reloy3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reloy3)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/26 "2005-07-28T14:38:19Z")
Since we are obviously outside of the “novels” mentioned in the thread title - In _SLC Punk_, the characters travel to Evanston, Wyoming to buy beer - a straight shot east on I-80 through a series of canyons and hills. But the movie has the characters traveling across what appear to be the salt flats, which are west of Salt Lake City and look nothing like the route to Evanston. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/27 "2005-07-28T14:48:57Z")
> [@](#): > > Since we are obviously outside of the “novels” mentioned in the thread title - > > In SLC Punk, the characters travel to Evanston, Wyoming to buy beer - a straight shot east on I-80 through a series of canyons and hills. But the movie has the characters traveling across what appear to be the salt flats, which are west of Salt Lake City and look nothing like the route to Evanston. Aha! The Athur Conan Doyle Curse of Bad SLC Geography strikes again! This tiome with the same error as ACD: > [@](#): > > As I’ve remarked on this Board before, authors writing mysteries about Salt Lake City often seem to screw up, starting with Arthur Conan Doyle’s very first Sherlock Holmes novel, “A Study in Scarlet”, which puts the Salt Flats to the East of the future Salt Lake City, so the Mormon pioneers have to walk through them to get to where SLC is going to be (The Salt Desert is on the West). Robin Cook then screwed up SLC geography in his novel Tabernacle. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/28 "2005-07-28T14:52:04Z")
_The Swiss Family Robinson_ is just one long, continous error. ---
**Author:** ![Southpaw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@Southpaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Southpaw)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/29 "2005-07-28T15:06:43Z")
The movie “Adventures in Babysitting” had the El go through Grant Park in Chicago. The El doesn’t go anywhere near Grant Park. The Paper Lace classic “The Night Chicago Died” had the narrator’s cop father dying on the EAST side of the city. That would be Lake Michigan. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/30 "2005-07-28T16:20:28Z")
> [@Southpaw](#): > > The Paper Lace classic “The Night Chicago Died” had the narrator’s cop father dying on the EAST side of the city. That would be Lake Michigan. IIRC there’s a similar, though apparently deliberate, situation in _North by Northwest_: the address of the auction room, which I think is given by Cary Grant to a taxi driver, uses a real Chicago street, but is just sufficiently east that the location would be in the lake. I also seem to recall seeing Ernest Lehman admit that this was to make the address sound plausible, yet still be ficticious. ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/31 "2005-07-28T16:43:03Z")
The song “Cotton Fields” contains the lyrics: > [@](#): > > It was down in Louisiana, > Just about a mile from Texarkana, > In them old cotton fields back home. Now, Texarkana can be either in Texas or in Arkansas, but it is not within “about a mile” of Louisiana. Unless “about a mile” actually means “about 40 miles.” ---
**Author:** ![NotWithoutRage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/22d042/32.png) [@NotWithoutRage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NotWithoutRage)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/32 "2005-07-28T17:54:03Z")
> [@KGS](#): > > Apparently the makers of _Independence Day_ believed it was possible to drive from NYC to Washington, D.C. in just under four hours, which is impossible even when there’s NOT an alien invasion going on. Hmm… we do that trip in about three and a half hours all the time. Also, all of the traffic was going the other way. Don’t see a problem there. My own nitpick, in **As Good As It Gets** : when coming back from the trip, Melvin stops at a gas station right outside the tunnel, and it’s broad daylight. By the time they get to the apartment, which I think is on the Upper West Side, it’s pitch dark. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/33 "2005-07-28T18:05:32Z")
> [@KGS](#): > > Conversely, in _12 Monkeys_, it takes two days for Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe to drive from Baltimore to Philadelphia. I’ve seen this movie many times and I seem to recall that the reason why it took a couple days to drive from Baltimore to Philadelphia was because they were also trying to avoid the authorities (which is why they stopped in a motel overnight). ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/34 "2005-07-28T18:19:16Z")
Rereading Niven/Pournelle’s **Footfall** , and one of the subplots takes place in the Puget Sound area. A group of survivalists chose Bremerton as the location for their cold-war bunker, which realistically would be a horribly poor choice. The Puget Sound area had countless cold-war Soviet nuke cross-hairs painted all over it: Bremerton shipyards, Port of Seattle, Whidbey NAS, Boeing factory… Really, the only place that would be a worse place for a survivalist bunker than the NW would be a portable lunchtime hot dog vendor wagon parked in the Pentagon parking lot. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/35 "2005-07-28T19:30:58Z")
> [@Southpaw](#): > > The Paper Lace classic “The Night Chicago Died” had the narrator’s cop father dying on the EAST side of the city. That would be Lake Michigan. Everything east of State Street is the east side of the city. On the North Side, that’s only a few blocks, but on the South Side, it’s quite large. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/36 "2005-07-28T19:37:45Z")
Stephen King screwed up in the _Dark Tower_ series with the placement of Co-Op City. Forgive me, I know it’s either in the Bronx or Brooklyn, but I can’t remember which. King, however, put it in the wrong place. However, he fixed that later in the books, by having Eddie discover that in _his_ universe, Co-Op City _is_ in the wrong place! Pretty neat acknowledgement of an error and a solution, if you ask me. ---
**Author:** ![brianjedi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@brianjedi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianjedi)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/37 "2005-07-28T20:05:45Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > Stephen King screwed up in the _Dark Tower_ series with the placement of Co-Op City. Forgive me, I know it’s either in the Bronx or Brooklyn, but I can’t remember which. King, however, put it in the wrong place. > > However, he fixed that later in the books, by having Eddie discover that in _his_ universe, Co-Op City _is_ in the wrong place! Pretty neat acknowledgement of an error and a solution, if you ask me. If only he’d get around to fixing The Stand. As anyone who’s ever even had a passing interest in NCAA basketball can tell you, the University of Kentucky is NOT in Louisville. /proud UK student and Wildcat fan // Louisville Cardinals suck ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/38 "2005-07-28T20:52:10Z")
A nitpick compared to most of these, but, since _12 Monkeys_ came up: There’s a scene where they drive east across what’s clearly the Ben Franklin Bridge. Literally less than a minute later, they’re in a heavily wooded, mostly-undeveloped area. This is not anything remotely like what you find just off the Franklin bridge. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/39 "2005-07-28T21:37:36Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > C’mon, how can the movie “Krakatoa, _East_ of Java” not be the champ? :eek: Victory is mine! ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647/40 "2005-07-28T22:00:36Z")
> [@GargoyleWB](#): > > Really, the only place that would be a worse place for a survivalist bunker than the NW would be a portable lunchtime hot dog vendor wagon parked in the Pentagon parking lot. I’ve heard that there is a hot dog stand in the plaza in the middle of the Pentagon called “Ground Zero” because it was apparantly targeted by Soviet nukes due to it being immediately surrounded by the Pentagon itself. Are we thinking of the same hot dog stand? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-novels-a-geography-lesson/313647.md?page=3)