Vanderbilt Library Open Journals

iwakiri, shoichiro

French

L’Idée du mal et l’influence de Baudelaire sur Kunio Tsukamoto

Cashwell, Peter. Along Those Lines. The Boundaries that Create Our World

Mauchamp, Benoît

Benoît Mauchamp, Book	Reviews,	AmeriQuests	13.1	(2017) 
Peter Cashwell, Along Those Lines: The Boundaries That Create Our World. Philadelphia, PA: 
Paul Dry Books, 237 pages, $16.95 (paperback edition), ISBN 978-1-58988-092-4 
 
Along Those Lines is a pleasant investigation about the diverse boundaries that people draw, 
more or less consciously. Some seem very real, others, imaginaries, yet both have concrete 
effects in our everyday life. Peter Cashwell, the author, can be credited for revealing the very 
reason of all these lines, as the subtitle sums it up: “the boundaries that create our world.” Not 
only people have deeply integrated them (as detailed in the section “What God Has Put Asunder” 
for instance, which explores moral boundaries), but they also crucially need them to actually 
apprehend the world. Therefore, “lines are just convenient tools for human activity” (13), be it 
the taxonomy that serves to classify species (“Names Will Never Hurt Me”), the borderline 
between existence and extinction (“The Undiscovered Country”), the lines we use to distinguish 
among genres (“Rock And a Hard Place”) or to basically divide genders (“Parts is Parts”). As 
suggested, the author considers a very wide array of lines. His holistic and vivid inquiry concerns 
the ways we operate all kinds of distinctions, as well as their common purpose, namely, to 
rationalize our environment, be it physical, temporal, sexual, natural, social, moral, etc. 
The chapters combine to create an impressive and composite set. To put things in order, 
the various lines considered are distributed in two parts of approximately the same length 
(comprising eight chapters of about fifteen pages each). The first section, “Time and Space,” 
deals with historical and geographical examples. Peter Caswhell, first considers the states’ lines, 
from a cultural, an economical, and more especially, a historical perspective in regards to the 
geographical drawing of the states and the dividing line opposing slavery to freedom (“State of 
The Union”). The second section, “Arts and Sciences,” looks at different attempts to make sense 
of our surroundings, and at the drawbacks as well of such rationalization. Particularly useful are 
the introductory chapters of each part. They provide an interesting insight into the dual nature of 
the line. “Maps and Legends” starts with the geometrical definition of the line, as infinite and 
unidimensional –hence triggering a comparison with God. But the author rather insists on the 
dividing purpose of it: “All lines are imaginary, established only because human beings need 
them for purposes of division” (18). Introducing the second part, “Just Lines on Paper” focuses 
on comics. Curiously putting aside the cultural distinction between Art and not-Art, Peter 
Cashwell addresses here the uniting function of the line while considering comics’ meaning-
making process. 
The idea to lead such an investigation about human-made boundaries first came to the 
author as he was crossing many state borders along his birding quest. Almost every chapter, if 
not all in fact, ends up making a connection with birding, which is probably less intentional than 
it is the result of a consuming hobby. Nevertheless, the author does not only rely on personal 
experiences (and the many trips he did with his father across the country), he also conveys the 
inputs of specialists he has met along the writing. First, his colleagues from Woodberry Forest 
School where he teaches English Literature: the Math teacher for the geometry of the line, the 
History teacher regarding the construction of the Union, and the Physics teacher who specialized 
in sports umpiring (see “The Starting Lineup”). Second, a diverse group ranging from audio 
engineer Mike Bread, sex and cognition psychologist, Abigail James, to artists such as Ursula 
Vernon or Shawn Smith, the latter being known for his voxels (“volumetric pixels” as detailed 
“Bricks and Morter” that addresses the border between digital and natural worlds). Third, 
ornithologists from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and more especially, Tim Gallagher, who 
Benoît Mauchamp, Book	Reviews,	AmeriQuests	13.1	(2017) 
welcomed him as an intern for Living Bird Magazine (it is during this stay in Ithaca that the book 
was actually written). 
Between these many references, Peter Cashwell manages subtle and habile transition, and 
his book is not devoid of humor, as shown by the “santorum” story for instance (in a chapter 
about eponyms: “History’s Greatest Monster”), or through the self-deceptive delineation of 
musical artists by a Pandora listener. This last example reveals the main issue revolving around 
the line: consensus. Whether it is the lines that we consistently debate about (genres) or lines that 
are so deeply anchored in our minds that we have trouble conceiving their social founding 
(genders), we nevertheless have to agree on divisions –or lack thereof– to build a cultural 
understanding of the natural world. As the author puts it: “the world we perceive is always 
perceived indirectly” (44). Therefore, those lines that we draw, some being very useful, and 
others, blindly discriminating, are always a cultural product that seemingly overlaps with nature. 
As a matter of fact, we are doomed to draw lines that in the end happens to be eminently 
ambivalent. Despite its oneness feature, a line systematically generates a problematic dualism 
Although Peter Cashwell points at this ambivalence to reveal the arbitrary feature of some lines, 
he does not really name it, nor does he explore it. Lines are highly paradoxical: visible and 
invisible, imaginary and real, abstract and concrete, cultural and natural. More essentially, they 
serve as both a uniting and a dividing artifact. For instance, the author acknowledges that some 
lines are made to be crossed (“Rite of Passage”), while others we do not quite govern, can only 
be crossed once, such as death. Yet, in both cases, the crossing in itself is the act that gives the 
line its very meaning; a statement that would need to be stressed explicitly. There is a very 
appropriate location in the book where this idea could have been emphasized: the introductory 
chapter of the second part that draws on comics. Following McCloud’s reflection about the way 
comics operate, Peter Cashwell introduces the “gutter” –the particular space separating two 
images– and the “closure” –the relation a reader creates between the distinct elements of a 
sequence. This is where the very essence of the line lies and how it works: by creating a 
difference that is at the very source of meaning (whether one considers Saussure’s linguistics or 
Bourdieu’s sociology, meaning only emerges from the act of bridging distinct entities). 
A line, in order to acquire significance, should be envisioned as a borderline and a 
guideline at once. Now, coming to this abstract comment, can one really compare geographic, 
economic, political, biological, cultural, artistic or literary borders? It might well be so, provided 
that this structural dimension of the line has been conceived, acknowledged, and reflected upon, 
which is not done in the book. This is clearly not its aim, yet the reader is left with a mixed 
impression of richness and overabundance regarding the many examples in the books. Less is 
more: a rigorous selection of concrete illustrations would have allowed a deeper understanding 
of the line. The drawback of Peter Cashwell’s work resides in the fact that he points out a whole 
set of lines without underlining their different natures, thus, he relies only superficially on their 
common aspect. This being said, one can congrat the author for his deconstructive attempt and 
for not imposing on the reader any particular thread. 
 
Benoît Mauchamp 
Independent Scholar 


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