Customer Reviews

Fellowship, The: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship

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For years I have been devoted to Frank Lloyd Wright, seeking out his buildings and reading all I could get my hands on about his life and work. His one-of-a-kind genus created a body of work which has lost none of its power. For me that power holds a nostalgia, too, for an era we will never see again, a time when cheap labor and an architect's take-no-prisoners charisma could get astonishing structures erected. Those elegant Usonian homes from the 1940s do make me pine for an era of cheaper materials and fewer code restrictions. One can read the histories of his structures and grow dewey-eyed: To think there was a time when one could build a house for $5,000, and have that house be an exquisite cedar and brick jewel box, sited magnifiecntly on a bluff with a glorious view of the valley below -- in very short order proclaimed a masterpiece -- !

But so much of the canonical Wright literature is hagiography. This book is anything but. Its first pages, for instance, rip away the veil of obscurity regarding Iovanna, Wright's & Olgivanna's child, who was still living when then the authors began the project. Until I read these passages, it had not occured to me that the woman was mysteriously absent from what I read about Wright and the Fellowship. The authors tracked her down to a mental institution. There is clearly a tragedy surrounding her, one that the keeper's of Wright's legacy have ... hidden? avoided? dismissed?
She seems lucid enough when the authors talk to her.

It is sad of course to have one's heroes diminshed. Wright does not come off well in this book. His and Olgivanna's antagonistic relationship is fully exposed. And she in particular seems an absolute horror. Perhaps I am unrealistically devoted to the ideal of independence of the human creative spirit, but I found the evidence of her meddling in the lives of the people around her to be appalling stuff. Wright's pettiness also had me confounded. Frequently his behavior was downright childish.

Towards the end of the book a good case is made for a strong history of manic-depression on both Wright's and his Olginanna's part, and certainly so in the case of their only child.

This book is filled with background on Gurdjieff In previous books his influence on the Fellowship has been alluded to but never has it been discussed in such detail. I found much of the detail to make for tedious reading however; I decided immediately Gurdjieff to be the very epitome of the Cult Of Gobbledygook (as such, a perfect foil for Wright himself -- did you ever try to read HIS writing??).

I must confess that as much as I love Wright's architecture and will continue to seek it out as well as the buildings designed by his apprentices, it is a bit of a relief to read it is not ALL regarded as masterwork. There are 2 books available covering the work of Wright's apprentices (Tobias Guggenheimer's "A Taliesin Legacy" and the official Taliesin Assosciate Architect's coffee-table style "A Living Architecture") and in each are examples of dubious architectural achievement. Of course architecture is a 3-dimensional experience and should not be judged by photographs alone. Wright, like any architect, had his share of the not-quite-beautiful. Wright built over 400 structures in his 72 year career, so seeming aesthetic missteps were inevitable. Maybe not everyone would agree what's on that list... but, is it just me or is Pfeiffer Chapel at Florida Southern College ugly?

Five years ago I made my first trip to Taliesin West, something I had been looking forward to for years. Indeed it was, and will continue to be, stunning. The aura of one person encompassing so many others, and in such an extensive built environment springing from that one mind, with little precedent, is humbling. But even then I got a spooky feeling from that Taliesin Fellowship, listening to grown apprentices or the children thereof give out tour-guide reminiscences, worshipful and rather too rehearsed. I knew then that being a Taliesin apprentice couldn't have been all that great ... and this book confirms my apprehensions vividly.

This is one of the most engaging non-fiction books I've read in the last few years. The reviewer who said that it combines the joys of People magazine and scholarship definitely has a point. The story of Wright's fellowship is wonderfully peculiar, amazing, and sad. I came to the book with some knowledge of Wright (I've been to both Taliesins and have visited a number of his other buildings) and a strong interest in 20th century American cultural history. But Wright's always been a puzzle. He was a great genius, but his roofs leaked. His architecture (to me, anyway) is infinitely more appealing than that of the International Style, but somehow became an also-ran. No strong proteges ever emerged to carry the torch.

This book certainly provides many clues to the puzzles of Wright. For one thing, it places him in the context of his culture. For example, I had no idea of the strong influence the occultist Georgi Gurdjieff had on Wright and especially his wife Olgivanna. And while I'd always heard that Taliesen was something of a "cult of personality," well, it was more than that -- it was pretty much a cult in the literal sense. Wright and his family occupied an almost godly position, and the "apprentices" slaved away uncompensated and bent to the Wright's every whim or were asked to leave.

One negative review complained that contradictory descriptons of Wright's behavior indicate that that the book is full of falsehoods. I take the opposite tack. I think the book draws a very believable portrait of a contradictory man. Wright is shown as a homophobe who nonetheless tolerated and treasured numerous homosexuals in his inner circle and an anti-Semite with many Jewish followers. Both are quite believable, partly because Wright had no interest in (and was not capable of) being consistent and because both prejudices were absolutely normal in early and mid-century America. I also have little trouble understanding that the great champion of a Democratic architecture could be at times both a fascist and communist sympathizer. He was a great elitist, and the sort of thinker who elevates Mankind in the abstract but has little sympathy for ordinary humans.

It's fun and illuminating to see Wright and Olgivanna take the measure of other 20th century luminaries -- Olgivanna dismissed "Atlas Shrugged" as "slush." And it's also fun to see how Wright, a stunningly imperious soul, could be intimidated by other even more imperious types -- especially if they were connected to money.

In truth, Wright emerges from this book as something of a monster, or as Gurdjieff put it, "an idiot." But anyone who knows anything about Wright's life already suspected that. What redeems him is the fact that he really was a genius, just as he always insisted.

Like many former apprentices I learned much more about Olgivanna
than I knew from my own contact during the time I was apprenticed at
Taliesin. It never occurred to me that she was indeed cruel--I just thought she was
FLLW's means to keep himself free of the logistics of housekeeping.
He never expressed much liking for the mystic Gurjieff, and Olgivanna set up the school
following Wright's death which spelled the demise of Wright's ideas in favor of the mystic.

I am sorry that the existing remnants of the Fellowship at Taliesin
seem to have prevailed in denying this exposition. The idolization of
Olgivanna persists!

The book reveals it all and is a great read!

Bill Patrick

This book absolutely blows the lid off the Taliesin idyll. Hails Wright (and rightly so) for the genius that he was but exposes his faults, many of which are so utterly shocking to anyone with even a minimal knowlege of Wright's life. Be prepared: it will definitely change your opinion of Wright. Book goes into a huge amount of detail on the relationship between Wright, his wife Olgivanna, and their involvement with her former mentor Gurdjieff, who had coveted Taliesin as the base of his American operations. In short, everything in Wright's life was far from calm. The apprentices are the real story here. The authors portray them as talented, but inexperienced amateurs, and it is fascinating to read how they had to work in such difficult situations on such monumental works as Fallingwater and the Johnson Wax building, all the while dealing with Wright's idiosyncracies. The apprentices were really the physical manifestation of Wright's genius. Most (sadly) faded from view or were hesitant to write books of their own lest they were perceived as riding their Master's coat tails. I'm glad their stories are now being told. The authors present a great story and a very eye-opening book on what had been a relatively little-known aspect of FLW's life and legacy.

I have always been fascinated by FLW's architecture, my favorite styles being the Prairie and Usonian styles. When you read which and how many buildings he had built per year, it hits you as being odd that he built very little during the roaring 20's? How did he survive during the depression? How could he afford to build such elaborate estates on architecture fees?

The Fellowship was the answer. I was amazed to discover from this book that he created a school and named it the FLW Fellowship. Applicants paid yearly tuitions to work there! In the beginning the education was gained by learning how to build Taliesin and doing such things as kitchen details and farming. It was gratifying to know that only rich kids could afford to attend the FLW Fellowship since no one except the rich during the depression had any money left. Rich kids paying to farm and do manual labor for FLW. Ya gotta love that.

During the early phase of the Fellowship, Wes Peters (apprentice) and Svetlana Wright (FLW's adopted daughter) left Taliesin. "Svetlana wrote Wes" about Olgivanna (FLW's 3rd wife, Svet's mother), "When I read her words I feel that a witch sits behind them! And I feel all sort of creepy and unclean!" That is exactly how I felt as I experienced this book............UNCLEAN.

FLW was a person of extreme contrast or shall I say a person that lived a bi-polar existence. He attracted the like into his Fellowship. I always wondered why his "organic architecture" never spread thru America. His ego would not allow it. He simply could not allow the possibility that someone else could progress his work to an even higher level of genius than his ego. His ego would not allow his genius to be "shared". This is the real FLW tragedy. For a genius to live to be 92 years old and not be able to "grow" apprentices to practice organic architecture. Pitiful. What a perfect ego lesson!

FLW's architecture is nothing more than the celebration of the ego. It breaks my heart.

It apparently took the authors ten years to write this book. The source material is amazing. While I doubt all the authors' conclusions are correct, they with their extensive research in my opinion used their best judgments in drawing conclusions. Most judgments are slanted towards being harsh.

I often thought that FLW was cruel to leave his first family consisting of a wife and six children. Now I am convinced that by abandoning his first family, he saved them from even greater cruelty. If you decide to read this book and experience this very dark journey, I am sure you will agree with me that staying away from FLW was one of the best decisions one could make.

Harold Zellman, architect and architectural historian and Roger Friedland, Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology at UCSB, have pulled off a major literary coup. They've written a book that will not only satisfy the academic rigor of their colleges, but also will be a sure-fire best seller full of sex, lies and architecture.
The new book The Fellowship - The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & The Taliesin Fellowship is a mesmerizing account of the drama, scandalous sexual escapades, spiritual journey, and artistic achievements of a man many believe was the premier architect of the twentieth century.
The book, published this week by Regan Media, has already been selected by Book of the Month Club, cited in Vanity Fair and The New York Post's Page Six
Zellman and Friedland's ten-year opus on Frank Lloyd Wright originally began when the two teamed up as Getty Scholars to examine a modernist cooperative community built in West Los Angeles after World War II. While researching Crestwood Hills, the two traced its origins back to two men--an architect and a violist--both of whom had been apprentices at Taliesin, an architectural commune set up in 1932 by Wright and his wife, the mysterious Olgivanna.
Taliesin was created to be an experimental center for both architecture and living. Staffed by young, eager aspiring architects -- mostly male -- who wanted to learn from the master, it quickly evolved into a "cult of genius," a place where Olgivanna, Wright's third wife, could promote the teaching of Georgi Gurdjieff. This bald, mustachioed, charismatic Russian trickster-guru claimed his eyes could not only penetrate a man's psyche, but also bring a woman to orgasm from across a room.
For the next thirty years, Taliesin became a place where Wright would not only get free in-house labor, but his wife would be able to have total sway over the mental, physical and sexual lives of the architect's devoted followers.
Zellman and Friedland were able to crack the hitherto impenetrable world of Taliesin, to show how many of the hundreds who came to study there were transformed by the Wrights into willing instruments of Olgivanna's will, how she was able to exert, total control, both emotionally and sexually over many of Wright's protégés. Frank Lloyd gave his wife the ultimate gift, her own live-action dollhouse.
In addition, The Fellowship depicts how the Wrights created one of the few safe havens for homosexuals of their era. Taliesin became one of the great closets in American history. Gay men could be safe there at a time when overt homosexual activity was still a dangerous activity in our country. However, a number of them paid quite a price.
The chapters on Olgivanna's playing with her doll house are riveting, particularly the stories about Joseph Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, who became a virtual slave of the Wright's and complained that her father's hours was not as an emotionally scaring experience as being at Taliesin.
The best sections of the book however are on Wright. The authors' insights into who Frank Lloyd really was are both insightful and pretty scary. Mr. Wright was the Mel Gibson of his era. Wright's anti-Semitism had to be kept under control: A majority of his clients were Jewish. Not only did Wright publicly endorse Charles Lindberg and Henry Ford's political charges blaming the Jews for America's entry into World War II, but, like Mr. Gibson, when provoked, Wright would resort to anti-Semitic screeds. For example, when a Jewish apprentice came in over bid construct an exhibition Wright had given him no plans, Wright sniped: "Let your beard grow back and go on being a rabbi." The apprentice was Jewish; he was not, however, a rabbi.
Friedland and Zellman also have done ground-braking work on Frank Lloyd Wright's sexual ambiguity, his life-long struggle with his own manhood, how he identified himself with Socrates bi-sexual lover, Alcibiades, a code-word for gay leaning men, how many of his closest male friends were homosexuals, how he confessed to one: "there but for the grace of God, go I."
What the authors do best is abjure the accepted myths about Frank Lloyd Wright and his profusely talented archetypical legacy. They show us with exquisite detail what it was like to live and create some of America's most famous architectural monuments.
The Fellowship is a true guilty pleasure. A book that you can read and feel smart about yourself, but one that will amuse and titillate the reader as much as this weeks copy of "People" magazine.

This is more a review of the Kindle edition than of the book itself, although the book is incredibly well researched and very entertaining. I have read a lot about Frank Lloyd Wright and this book keeps you turning the pages. My review, however, is more about HarperCollins and its conversion of the book to the e-book format. For a mainstream publisher, this conversion is absolutely horrendous. The formatting of the text is the worst of any current book I have read on the Kindle so far. There are more spaces left out after a period or a comma than I can count, there are more apostrophe- 's' that are a half inch apart from the rest of the word, when '[T]hen'or '[W]hen' is used in a quote, the formatting is incorrect, as there is an extra space within the []. All of these punctuation and formatting issues make for an uncomfortable read. In the future HarperCollins needs to do a better job of formatting their e-books.

As an architect, I have read dozens of books about FLLW. None, however, have contained the revealing facts found in The Fellowship. This new material helps explain the intimate life style, relationships, and design process of one of America's greatest architects. The authors have done a remarkable job of research, which has resulted in a passionate, exciting, and moving story.

Wright is not only an important architect but a fascinating historical figure. Zellman is one of LA's great unacknowledged architects and his book lives up to his reputation as a savvy innovator able to weave together diffuse threads and create a coherant, stunning whole. Working with University Professor Roger Friedland, the authors have created a page turner that will be of interest not just to Wright fans but to those that like an extensively researched and well written biography. I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it!

Stunning Research. The authors gather from published sources and unpublished material, some from the archives of Taliesin and T. West. More spectacular is the material provided by interviews. Were it not for these authors, the stories of participants (documented as to who said what at the end) could have been lost to history. While there may be some faulty memories reporting and coloring of those who spoke on behalf of friends or relatives, I believe their sum total reflects the flavor of the life in this commune/cult.

Stunning Narrative. Often when two or more writers collaborate you can detect the separate voices. This is particularly true when the writers have different backgrounds. This text is seamless. The authors truly write with one voice.

Stunning Organization. When I began the book, I wondered why so much of the initial part was devoted to Gurjief, but as the story unfolds, you realize how deeply the FLW's work and Fellowship were influenced by this seemingly remote philosophy. It fully informs the later part of the story.

Stunning Story. The story is more dramatic than I had envisioned. The pacing is excellent. You see that Wright did not plan it this way, it evolved this way as a part of his personality, and later his third wife's drive. It's amazing that at 60 years old, he seems to be just winding up when so many others are winding down. At 90 he is still pursuing commissions with no signs of tiring.

I visited the Wisconsin Taliesin in the early 1980's. The place was empty, with one morose keeper of the flame receiving tourists. Our party (of two tourists) received something of a tour of this deserted, disappointing and needing repair facility. At this time, Olgivanna would have still been holding court in Taliesin West, which our tour guide described as a vibrant active workshop. Sadly, I remember with greater clarity the elaborate, the less meaningful, House on the Rock, another residential tourist attraction in the area.

The authors stick with their focus... the Fellowship... and do not dwell on the many tempting side issues such as a critique of the styles and the philosophies. I would have liked more about FLW's first 6 children, his parents and aunts, but this would have strayed from the focus and added more than one book could carry.

The book has a good layout with photographs placed with the material they support. The photos, particularly the portraits, add to the understanding of the text.

This is the kind of book that when it is finished, the reader needs time to digest it all.