Sunday, February 01, 2009

After 142 years, Frank Lloyd Wright continues to confound

New York Times, meet the New York Times . . .

“T. C. Boyle’s dreary new novel, The Women, isn’t a rewrite of Clare Boothe Luce’s wicked 1936 play The Women. It’s a rewrite of the life of Frank Lloyd Wright that somehow manages to turn the gripping, operatic saga of America’s premier architect and the women in his life into a tedious, predictable melodrama.”
- Michiko Kakutani, An Egotistical Architect as Seen by His Women,
New York Times 1/26/09

“. . . The Women adds a powerful new chapter to this continuing narrative, and it is Boyle at his best. It is a mesmerizing story of women who invest everything, at great risk, in that mysterious 'bank of feeling' named Frank Lloyd Wright. ”
Joanna Scott, The Architect of Love, cover review, New York Times Sunday Review of Books, 2/1/2009

2 comments:

liz and friends said...

The whole obsession with FLW is a phenomenon in itself. I'm sure we'll see more novels, non fiction works, films in future. I'm going to tweak my own early 60s modernist house into prairie style, complete with water cascading over rock, so I can cash in, offering the place as a film/tv set.

There's a fantastic recent novel Careless by Deborah Robertson ...the main character is obsessed with Frank Lloyd Wright.
And Nancy Horan's Loving Frank about Frank's wife Mamah.

liz and friends said...

Architects beware T.C.Boyle's book reading and signing tomorrow night (Mon 16th Feb) at Unity Temple, Oak Park. This event promoting Boyle's new book "The Women" (told from the perspectives of four women in Frank Lloyd Wright's life) is bound to attract large numbers of architects wives and ex wives.
Like bluebeard's wives, they must be kept apart lest they share bitter stories about the architects in their lives, and find that they are not alone. Dangerous solidarity.
Boyle's reading could be disrupted by talk of absent fathers and unfinished homes - stalled at stage 7 of a 25 stage building plan. Incomplete projects awaiting the architect's scarce time and resources, half built kitchens and bathrooms, marked by Derridean differance. While many follies are started and completed - a tower, a reading nook, a garden room, an elaborate cubby house, a car port, or beautifully designed outdoor concrete area.
Architects may find themselves hunted by an angry mob.