graphics in a novel?

dedmedved- I read a novel earlier this year that included graphics. Its narrator was a boy who had autism, who drew maps and pictures to help explain the text, which consisted of explanations of his daily routine,etc.

I thought they were an asset to the story as they added to the authenticity of this boy's particular state of mind. I thought they also added to the humor.

One of my favorite parts of the book in fact had to do with the fact that this boy had trouble "reading" peoples' faces. He used his own little smiley faces to illustrate it - but I'll use emoticons. He said, "I can understand what it means when peoples' faces look like this: and I can understand what it means when people's faces look like this: , or this: - but I don't understand what this means: , so I asked my teacher Siobhan. She told me not to worry about it, because she could never understand what meant either."

It sounds like a map would fit in with your general theme. I know I always appreciate having a sense of place set or described as thoroughly as possible when I'm reading a novel.
I have no idea about how that would affect marketing or sales though.

*Sorry - I just reread your post and realized that the pirate map was ony hypothetical. I guess I would say, if your graphic enhanced the story and its insertion fit the personality characteristics of your narrator - in other words if there was a compelling reason that helped propel the story or cement a theme, I think it might work.

Dave Eggers, the 29-year-old editor of the determinedly odd literary journal McSweeney's, has written a memoir that wreaks delirious havoc by turning the autobiographical genre on its head. As its flippant title makes riotously clear, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is fitted with a bullet-proof vest of self-mocking irony. Before the narrative proper even gets under way, we're treated to some 40 pages of satirical prefatory material, including the copyright page, which is itself loaded with jokes: "Published in the United States by Simon & Schuster, a division of a larger and more powerful company called Viacom Inc., which is wealthier and more populous than eighteen of the fifty states of America, all of Central America, and all of the former Soviet Republics combined and tripled." This kind of David Lettermanesque preemptive strike could easily have backfired if Eggers's memoir weren't in fact as damn good as it turns out to be. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is altogether a triumphant literary debut.
The laughter begins to stick in our throats when Eggers recounts the harrowing cancer death of his 51-year-old mother. He unflinchingly evokes the awful eternity of watching a dying parent's final days - "All words will be considered her last, until they are followed by others." Some readers will undoubtedly be offended by Eggers's irreverence, but the jokes are an honest expression of the fragile human impulse to seek humor in the things that we fear the most.