Customer Reviews

Frank Lloyd Wright (Penguin Lives)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you know any American architect, or maybe any architect, by name, it is Frank Lloyd Wright. This is just the way Wright would have wanted it. There is a story that he was a witness at a trial, and after being sworn in, he was asked his occupation. "I am the world's greatest architect," he deposed. When this raised eyebrows, he clearly loved making the explanation, "After all, I am testifying under oath." The remarkable works he produced were a product of that huge ego, as were the financial and marital crises that were present every year of his working life. It is all covered in succinct form in _Frank Lloyd Wright_ (Viking) by Ada Louise Huxtable, one of the admirable "Penguin Lives" series. Huxtable is an established architecture critic, and an obvious admirer of Wright; her book, full of praise and wonder at the works, does not skimp on the questionable morality, which did not just extend to sexual affairs but also to basic financial agreements with clients and creditors. "He never played it safe - in art or in life - and apology was not his style." Any lack of scruples is long gone; the buildings (most of them) remain.

Huxtable is generous in mentions of other books on Wright, to which she refers in the text for the reader's reference. In 1932 he published his own _Autobiography_, much of which is quoted here. Huxtable makes clear with every quotation, though, that there is almost always a second or third interpretation of events, and that he wrote not so much to give particulars of his life but to show himself in "his Olympian position as the self-described inventor of modern architecture." Wright was no imitator, as anyone who examines his works can see immediately: "He remembered everything, but copied nothing, absorbing what he liked and learned into his own creative thinking." He had a hardscrabble upbringing, powered by a mother who wanted him even before birth to be a great architect. He had no formal architectural education, declaring that a conventional education would have been useless to someone of his capacities and sensitivities. He learned by moving from one firm to another until he had his own. His first marriage produced six children, but he was never a good family man. He simply, precipitously left with a lover in 1909, leaving family, debts, and unfinished projects. In his own mind, he was a moral man, but his morality was his own; he could not have been at fault, only a hypocritical society could.

When the depression hit, it hit all architects including Wright. In his sixties, he published his _Autobiography_ and was regarded by others as finished; he had thirty years of celebrated buildings behind him, and no one expected him to continue, except for possibly putting out variations on what he had done before. It did not happen, and his later work was so extraordinary that his refusal to go quietly away even in his nineties is perhaps the most inspiring part of his life. He was brought back into the architectural spotlight with the 1934 Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, a spectacular union of natural and artificial beauty which is now the most-visited architectural shrine in the United States. He never let up until he died in 1959 while another late masterpiece, the dramatic Guggenheim Museum, was under construction. Huxtable's book has a few pictures of the main buildings, enough for this overview, but not nearly enough when each of them merits a photo book of its own. But the brisk narrative is clear, insightful, and provocative, serving as a fine introduction to an astonishing career and personality.

The good news: _Frank Lloyd Wright (Penguin Lives)_, by Ada Huxtable, is a biography on Wright that you can recommend to people you know who may be interested in the architect, but who don't want to wade through the larger biographies out there. Her writing is crisp and enjoyable. She provides nice overviews of Wright's interest in and connections to the Arts and Crafts movement and transcendentalism, while also providing neat, compact and well-written descriptions of the Usonian house concept, Wright's winter home, Taliesin West (Arizona), and the Guggenheim Museum, among other movements and buildings.

The bad news: the book is marred by factual mistakes that should have been caught during the editing process. So far, I've definitively found 15 such mistakes, and there are about 5 more that I have to check on. For example: she states that three people survived the devastating 1914 fire that consumed the residential wing of Wright's Wisconsin home, Taliesin. Only two people survived the fire. Twice she assigns a statement to Frank Lloyd Wright's oldest son, Lloyd, that was actually made by another son, David. She also incorrectly assigns a statement to Frank Lloyd Wright regarding his feelings following the 1914 fire. From p. 137-38 of Huxtable's book: "Wright also remembered hearing a whip-poor-will, a sound that would always evoke a terrible sadness." That memory was instead related by Wright's nephew, Franklin Porter, to Meryle Secrest, the author of _Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography_: "For ever after a song of the whippoorwill at night... seems infinitely sad." [p. 222, from the 1993 Harper Perennial edition of Secrest's book.] This statement, as Secrest noted in the book's endnotes, was made to her by Porter, so this was not Secrest's mistake, but Huxtable's.

These are the most egregious errors and the ones that are the easiest to demonstrate, but they are not the only errors. Additionally, the mistakes that I found were corrected in readily available sources on Frank Lloyd Wright. You can find the quotes by David Wright, etc., by reading Secrest's biography. Other sources include Brendan Gill's, _Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright_, and Robert Twombly's _Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and His Architecture_.

Regardless of these problems, I'm giving the book two stars for the reasons stated in the first paragraph. The book is entertaining, but it is not scholarly. It is not expected to be, and I think that it's a nice start for someone with a beginning interest in Frank Lloyd Wright. But I do think that these mistakes and others should be corrected for the paperback edition. As Huxtable is a Pulitzer Prize winning architectural critic, I would hope that she would want the facts to be straight.

I need a fighter, a lover of space, an agitator, a tester and a wise man. . . . I want a temple of spirit, a monument! - Hilla Rebay to Frank Lloyd Wright, 1943 - and the result was the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Anyone who has seen Fallingwater - even just in pictures - has to stand in awe of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

He brought to the Fallingwater, to the Gugg, and to a large number of other buildings a combination of art, function, compatiblility with its surroundings and sheer genius that remains unchallenged decades later.

Great genius in one area does not automatically translate into a great overall life. And in the case of Frank Lloyd Wright that overall life seems to have many versions. The version he preferred is the one he described in his autobiography. It is just a touch glorified. with the opening of the archives of Frank Lloyd Wright thirty years after his death other view emerge.

Ms. Huxtable has merged all the versions of his life into an eminently readable story of the life of a genius -- excellent.

There is so much that is right about this handy and elegant little biographical volume that anyone who wants to know about Frank Lloyd Wright would find themselves in good company with the brilliant Ms. Huxtable. It is an excellent starting point and may be all that the general reader will need to satisfy a level of interest in the great American architect. Or it may send the reader looking for more--and with all that has been and is being written about Frank Lloyd Wright, that could easily become a lifelong quest.

For those who do not have that kind of time to give the subject, trust Ada Louise Huxtable. She knows architecture (her skyscraper book is a classic) and her appreciation of the impact and influence of Frank Lloyd Wright comes through on every page. So does her awareness that the same genius that made such serene spaces also led a wildly tempestuous life. Her prose is spare and crisp. Her insights are keen.

Having read this book, the reader wanting more about Frank Lloyd Wright would perhaps want to read Brendan Gill's "Many Masks" and Meryle Secrest's bio of the great architect, too.

It is interesting that in another review of this book, on this site, "Ehringer" (AKA Keiran Murphy, the historian of Taliesin Preservation, Inc.), chooses to pick apart the book due to some minor points in what is otherwise a fine account by a recognized expert in the field. How sad.

Do not let those quibbles prevent you from reading it.

The author of this book, Ada Louise Huxtable, is a well known architectural historian, critic, and journalist.
This book is a compact review of modern architecture that features a superficial portrait of FLW - his life, philosophy, theories and personality - and his influence on architecture, internationally. There are about ten poorly reproduced black and white photographs that provide inadequate illustration of the FLW style and work.

This short treatment is not intended to be a serious or technical study of the great architect's work. There are other biographies and volumes for that. Huxtable handles skillfully the balance between an almost prurient coverage of the details of FLW's always erratic and sometimes tragic life with the history and analysis of the man and his work. This book is definitely a popularization of a
big subject and as such appears to be be intended for the neophyte or casual reader.

A briskly written, concise biography of Frank Lloyd Wright that manages to be very even-handed about both his enormous talent and his nearly-as-enormous ego. It's not a thorough study of his life and work (I particularly thought it was skimpy on Wright's later projects; for that reason, I'd probably give it only 4.5 stars if Amazon allowed half-star rating increments), but it is an excellent, quick-read introduction to an incredible architect.

Books about Mr. Wright, especially those that delve into his personal life, tend to grow like kudzu. Their authors start out intending to present a coherent, concise picture of the man, but they find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, controversy, and innuendo that swirls about him even today. Too many authors abandon any pretense of order and just splash it all down on paper, leaving the reader to hack through the resulting jungle alone.

Ms. Huxtable's admirable book is the first Wright biography I've seen that resists the temptatation to make the reader do all the work. She tells more about Mr. Wright and about his important buildings in fewer words than any other author. Of course there are errors here and there--most of the principals are long dead, and who can reconstruct a conversation that took place eighty years ago with any accuracy? All Wright biographers, except the syncophants associated with the Taliesin Fellowship, disagree on various points. One must also remember that the Fellowship's mythmaking apparatus started up shortly after the Fellowship began, and went into overdrive after Mr. Wright's passing in 1959, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. Having to see through this smothering blanket of hagiography makes Ms. Huxtable's accomplishment all the more remarkable.

Even those who think they know all about Frank Lloyd Wright may learn a thing or two from this book, and it would be hard to imagine a better introductory book for those who know they do not.

In this brief biography, one learns more about Frank Lloyd Wright than they could in a 500 paged biography. The reader learns of Wright's rise to fame and his fall, feels for him as he falls in love and loses the love of his life to death, empathizes with him as he experiences an extremely difficult divorce, and see him live a life of financial woes which ultimately end up in bankruptcy.

The balance between the amount written on his personal life and that of his life as a prominent architect is excellent and makes the book all the more enjoyable to read.

I knew very little about Wright and wanted to learn more. This book satisfied that need. She is a terrific writer. Wright led a very interesting and ecentric and difficult life. I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about this genius.

The book I purchased is in excellent shape.

Heather Carolyn Riehl holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Textile Design from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York and is currently seeking her Master's degree from Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pennsylvania.

Frank Lloyd Wright, a biography by award winning architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable is a very insightful novel about a man who made such an impact on the art of architecture during his lifetime. Huxtable focuses both on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright both personally and professionally. Although it seems at times to steer more towards a personal biography, it is essential to understand Wright's background and beliefs to truly appreciate him as the artist that he was.

Huxtable takes us all the way through Wright's life, from birth to death. She briefly touches on the impact that Wright's architecture had following his death as well as some unfortunate family matters concerning the placement of his remains.

Frank Lloyd Wright is depicted in this biography as somewhat of a rebel. He lived by his own rules and detested establishment. It may be fair to say that Wright was somewhat of an egotist, but had he not possessed the confidence that he did, it may not have been possible for him to think outside of the box as often as he did. It was his ambition to create his own style that made him stand out from the rest, and no one was able to get in his way from doing so.

Huxtable explains how Frank Lloyd Wright was influenced by Japanese art and the philosophies of Viollet-le-duc. Sculpture reproductions of the Winged Victory and Venus de Milo were often used in his interiors. Wright was a very intellectual, knowledgeable man although he had no formal training in architecture.

Being involved with several different women, marrying three of them in his lifetime, it would appear that women were very important in Wright's life. Conceiving six children in his first marriage and two in his third, one might see Wright as a veritable family man although this assumption could not be further from the truth. No matter what was happening in Wright's family life, his architecture always took precedence.

Huxtable examines several of Wright's architectural triumphs, including his many prairie homes which lead to a domestic revolution in the Midwest, Fallingwater which was built for the Kaufmann family in Pennsylvania, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and his two Taliesin estates, one of which endured a murder rampage and three tragic fires.

Frank Lloyd Wright comes across in this biography as a beatnik architect, if there ever was such a thing. Being educated on the subject of architecture, unexplained references to such people as Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Gehry; I was able to understand the passages, where as a reader completely uneducated on the topic may be confused by some topics in this novel. Subsequently, I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in art or architecture as it is a very interesting look into the life of this magnificent architect.