Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/literatures-harshest-criticism/35598/ en-us Design Observer Group 2012-08-26T19:17:45-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0 Fischer, notably for his comment that the nouveau riche notion of good taste is classicism.
Boyd's most famous book is "The Australian Ugliness". Published in 1960 with witty succinct illustrations, his comments are, to this day relevant and accurate. It is a must to everyone's collection.
And Pevsner for his belief that architecture is the supreme art to which all others are subservient.]]> http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/literatures-harshest-criticism/35598/#comments 2012-08-26T19:17:45-05:00 Titus Groan and Gormenghast are novels that most haunt the teenage imagination, so you might have left it too late, Mark. But, still, the vast, rambling castle in those books is a spectacularly detailed and vivid creation. Those are two essential reads for architecture lovers with a gothic inclination.]]> http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/literatures-harshest-criticism/35598/#comments 2012-08-23T05:14:03-05:00 http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/literatures-harshest-criticism/35598/#comments 2012-08-22T21:20:19-05:00
"…and so into the house (somehow smaller than its actual size –it was of two storeys– unpainted and a little shabby, yet with an air, a quality of grim endurance as though it had been created to fit into and complement a world in all ways a little smaller than the one in which it found itself) where in the gloom of the shuttered hallway those air was even hotter than outside, as if there were prisoned in it like in a tomb all the suspiration of slow heat-laden time which had recurred during the forty-three years...."

"He lived out there, eight miles from any neighbor, in masculine solitude in what might be called the half acre gunroom of a baronial splendor. He lived in the spartan shell of the largest edifice in the county, not excepting the courthouse itself…without any feminized softness of window pane or door or mattress."

"[Sutpen's] presence alone compelled that house to accept and retain human life; as though houses actually possess a sentience, a personality and character acquired not from the people who breathe or have breathed in them so much as rather inherent in the wood and brick or begotten upon the wood and brick by the man or men who connived and built them – in this one an incontrovertible affirmation for emptiness, desertion; an insurmountable resistance to occupancy save when sanctioned and protected by the ruthless and the strong."

Amazing. Through Faulkner's prose, we understand Sutpen's Hundred as a living, breathing thing that has a direct relationship with the lives of its occupants. I'd love to see such narrative evocations in contemporary architectural criticism.]]> http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/literatures-harshest-criticism/35598/#comments 2012-08-22T15:18:10-05:00 In the case of fiction writing, harsh criticism may help the writing come alive. It doesn't mean that it is true, however. Words can just as easily be pretty lies. and at worst they are siphoning off the greatness of the work itself--as Jay-Z says, its easy to criticize what's popular.
I would have been interested to see what Hemmingway thought of modern architecture--because both were in pursuit of some kind of truth and greatness in design in the first half of the 20th century. Sebald is more current to our time, so I assume he is with the current strands of irony and decay of modern society, which aren't really constructive impulses in my opinion.


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