"Plagued by Fire" review
The book seems very seriously researched on the one hand
yet casual and conversational in tone on the other.
I like the way PH is putting Wright's life in chronological order.
This is probably old news to guys like RG.
Yet, for example, locating the young Wright of the family portrait on his Oak Park steps as still working in the Auditorium Tower for A&S is appreciated.
I also apprecited PH's interpretative description of Wright, his wife Katherine and his Mother in that shot as revealing the relational triangle and perhaps the break to come.
There is something compelling in that kind of literary license and liberty.
On the other hand, the remarks on Wright's *, at this point (113 pages in) strike me as too casual and overly sugestive.
*= s e x u a l i t y
yet casual and conversational in tone on the other.
I like the way PH is putting Wright's life in chronological order.
This is probably old news to guys like RG.
Yet, for example, locating the young Wright of the family portrait on his Oak Park steps as still working in the Auditorium Tower for A&S is appreciated.
I also apprecited PH's interpretative description of Wright, his wife Katherine and his Mother in that shot as revealing the relational triangle and perhaps the break to come.
There is something compelling in that kind of literary license and liberty.
On the other hand, the remarks on Wright's *, at this point (113 pages in) strike me as too casual and overly sugestive.
*= s e x u a l i t y
200 pages in.
I'm glad I bought this book.
PH interprets another Oak Park family portrait - the one with Wright in white smock
and sitting up on the terrace wall and locates it precisely, yet a little speculatively, in time.
It's a good technique.
I had not realized how long he and Mamah were involved before they took off.
...and the launch of their trip to Europe coincides with the public dedication of Unity Temple.
.... The research into Julian Carlton's background is very good too.
PH is also taking the architecture very seriously. It means something to him.
This is not a Fellowship gab fest type of thing.
The "bad reviews" of this book linked to in the past few months I don't get at this point.
I'm glad I bought this book.
PH interprets another Oak Park family portrait - the one with Wright in white smock
and sitting up on the terrace wall and locates it precisely, yet a little speculatively, in time.
It's a good technique.
I had not realized how long he and Mamah were involved before they took off.
...and the launch of their trip to Europe coincides with the public dedication of Unity Temple.
.... The research into Julian Carlton's background is very good too.
PH is also taking the architecture very seriously. It means something to him.
This is not a Fellowship gab fest type of thing.
The "bad reviews" of this book linked to in the past few months I don't get at this point.
Last edited by Tom on Mon Oct 14, 2019 8:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
at page 292
This book is turning into the book I had hoped 'Death in a Prairie House" would have been.
The all too brief excerpts of letters between Wright and Richard Lloyd Jones ARE pretty funny.
This book is turning into the book I had hoped 'Death in a Prairie House" would have been.
The all too brief excerpts of letters between Wright and Richard Lloyd Jones ARE pretty funny.
Last edited by Tom on Mon Oct 14, 2019 8:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
From the Harper's review:
From that thread:
Oy, we established, I think, in our Frank LINCOLN Wright thread that Wright went by Lloyd on a census form in 1880:When his parents split in 1885�he claimed that his father had deserted the family when in fact his mother kicked him out�Wright adopted a new middle name, the first of many Welsh affectations.
From that thread:
Another from the Harper's review:I’m reading Ron McCrea’s excellent “Building Taliesin�. On page 57, In the list of notes:
Quote:
“3. The 1880 census lists among the residents at James Lloyd Jones farm “Hired hands: John William Kritz, Frank Loyd Wright.�That's HYPOCAUST heating!He invented radiant heating�which he also called gravity heat and, not a little disturbingly, “holocaust heating��by burying pipes in concrete slabs, an idea, he said, that came from the submerged sources of heat in Japanese homes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocaust
One wonders if Hendrickson got that wrong... Wright uses the term "hypocaust" in his An Autobiography:
https://books.google.com/books?id=S8zlZ ... st&f=false
and in The Natural House , I believe.
Watch that little error in a magazine (hopefully not Hendrickson's book, as well) get latched upon and spread to the four corners of the internet, becoming the grist for some as yet unknown mill.
Last edited by DRN on Fri Nov 15, 2019 2:41 pm, edited 5 times in total.
And another....
I read this review by Witold Rybczynski in the print edition of Architect magazine.
https://www.architectmagazine.com/desig ... d-wright_o
The following passage in the review stood out given some of our "Brendan Gill vs. Truth" discussions:
I read this review by Witold Rybczynski in the print edition of Architect magazine.
https://www.architectmagazine.com/desig ... d-wright_o
The following passage in the review stood out given some of our "Brendan Gill vs. Truth" discussions:
He is hardly the first to attempt this task. Brendan Gill’s Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright (Putnam, 1987) is sometimes gossipy but informed by the author’s sound eye and the fact that he knew Wright and was close to him;...
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"... that he knew Wright and was close to him...."
After "Many Masks" was released (once the litigious Olga was safely dead) I asked everyone I could who knew FLW in those days, if they knew anything about Brendan Gill. Not one of them, Cornelia Brierly, John DeKoven Hill, Bruce Pfeiffer, Tom Casey, John Geiger ... not one of them ever heard of Gill before the book.
After "Many Masks" was released (once the litigious Olga was safely dead) I asked everyone I could who knew FLW in those days, if they knew anything about Brendan Gill. Not one of them, Cornelia Brierly, John DeKoven Hill, Bruce Pfeiffer, Tom Casey, John Geiger ... not one of them ever heard of Gill before the book.
Thus it seems unlikely that Gill knew Wright, and vice versa ?
The name was familiar to me before learning of his Wright book---but I may have been thinking of Eric
Gill, an artist and designer whose work has a legitimate place in the canon of Twentieth-century craft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Gill
Brendan Gill has the dubious honor of having published what might be the least flattering photo of Mr
Wright ever to have been taken.

The name was familiar to me before learning of his Wright book---but I may have been thinking of Eric
Gill, an artist and designer whose work has a legitimate place in the canon of Twentieth-century craft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Gill
Brendan Gill has the dubious honor of having published what might be the least flattering photo of Mr
Wright ever to have been taken.

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Plagued By Fire
I'm disturbed that the cover photo is a stock one which we have seen many times before. It has nothing to do with the title. How about a photo one of the many Taliesin fires?
How about this for an unfortunate cover photo:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fr ... frontcover
Must be one of the last photos ? Identified by the publisher only as "Wisconsin Historical Society, WHi 33104"
S
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fr ... frontcover
Must be one of the last photos ? Identified by the publisher only as "Wisconsin Historical Society, WHi 33104"
S
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