Curious house construction: a novel centred on modern architecture has shaky foundations.

Curious house construction: a novel centred on modern architecture has shaky foundations. Story House Timothy Taylor Timothy Taylor or Tim Taylor could be Timothy Taylor (archaeologist), a British archaeologist Timothy Taylor (art dealer), a British art dealer Timothy Taylor (economist), American economist and academic professor Knopf Canada 452 pages, hardcoverISBN-13: 9780676977646 ISBN-10: 0676977642 Okay, all right. Any book with architects as main characterscan't help but evoke Ayn Rand's potboiler pot��boil��er?n.A literary or artistic work of poor quality, produced quickly for profit.[From the phrase boil the pot, to provide one's livelihood. The Fountainhead foun��tain��head?n.1. A spring that is the source or head of a stream.2. A chief and copious source; an originator: "the intellectual fountainhead of the black conservatives",published in 1943, still selling more than 100,000 copies a year, and tothis day the only novel an architect is likely to have read. Say whatyou will about Rand's ego-worshipping worldview world��view?n. In both senses also called Weltanschauung.1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group. and perfervidprose, she got it right about the romantic self-notions of modernarchitects, the so-called prophets, fathers and heroes of a movementthat stood for Truth Against the World, to quote the family mottoadopted by Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr. (March 30,1890, Oak Park, Illinois – May 31, 1978, Santa Monica, California), commonly known as Lloyd Wright, was an American architect who did most of his work in Southern California. , allegedly the model for Rand'sHoward Roark. Timothy Taylor, on the other hand, can't even get thenames right. Among others he drops, Koolhaas is misspelled Koolhaus andMendelsohn becomes Mendelssohn. You are expected to know thesearchitects' first names, or to be too cool to care. Once you accept architecture's current role as gauge andguarantor of fashionability and media smarts, you are free to enjoyStory House for what it is--a crammed and insistent novel for hipstersin which a mysterious white building figures as setting, plot generator A plot generator is either: a fictional plot device which permits the generation of plots for an extended serial without requiring a great deal of logical connection between the episodes, or ,metaphor, symbol, repository of personal histories and excuse tophilosophize phi��los��o��phize?v. phi��los��o��phized, phi��los��o��phiz��ing, phi��los��o��phiz��esv.intr.1. To speculate in a philosophical manner.2. . Once upon a modern time there was a worldly Vancouver architectnamed Packer Gordon, who took his two teenaged sons to a boxing coachwith a gym in the basement of his house, a grungy grun��gy?adj. grun��gi��er, grun��gi��est SlangIn a dirty, rundown, or inferior condition: grungy old jeans.[Origin unknown. cube-shaped buildingin a neighbourhood on the skids. Gordon has decided the boys will settlescores in the boxing ring while he films them going at it. Soundssimple, if contrived, but Taylor is not interested in just spinning ayarn. He set out to write a novel of ideas. The boxing coach has bigideas about styles of fighting. He has devised a "styletriangle" labelled B, P, S--Boxer, Puncher, Swarmer. Of the twobrothers, children of different mothers, Graham is the one who becomesthe swarmer, hammering half-brother Elliot but good. We get the idea.They'll never get along. But the boxing teacher's got nothing on Taylor. The authortakes on duos and triangles, the authentic and the counterfeit, films,films about films, reality television, construction and deconstruction,modernism and Haida longhouses. The writing is dense, thanks to the ideathat a sentence can consist of a modifying clause or prepositional prep��o��si��tion��al?adj.Relating to or used as a preposition.prepo��si phrase--any part of speech can do--followed by a period; scenes arespliced together with such modern-day indifference to the idea ofchronology, but it is often difficult to know whether it is now, a yearago or two weeks from next Sunday. The plot achieves coherence chieflyby drawing on such hoary hoar��y?adj. hoar��i��er, hoar��i��est1. Gray or white with or as if with age.2. Covered with grayish hair or pubescence: hoary leaves.3. literary devices as coincidence, premonition,prophecy, dreams, eureka moments and climactic chapter endings a laNancy Drew. The gist is as follows: the white 1939 building in which Graham andElliot's fateful fight took place turns out to be a99-percent-certain early unknown work by their father, Packer. By thetime this is discovered, the boxing instructor has plunged to his deaththrough the skylight, Packer is long dead, Graham is an architect in hisown right, successful but unfulfilled, and Elliot has cobbled cob��ble?1?n.1. A cobblestone.2. Geology A rock fragment between 64 and 256 millimeters in diameter, especially one that has been naturally rounded.3. cobbles See cob coal.tr. together aliving as a counterfeiter of branded merchandise: watches, sports gear,sunglasses. Both brothers are questing after change, truth,authenticity, a sense of self-worth, someplace some��place?adv. & n.Somewhere: "I didn't care where I was from so long as it was someplace else"Garrison Keillor.See Usage Note at everyplace. good. They come togetheragain, first by coincidence, then by fiat of a reality televisionproducer in Los Angeles Los Angeles(lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. who just happens to live in a house commissionedfrom Packer Gordon, collect Packer Gordon models and drawings, and beara grudge: Gordon broke up his marriage. The brothers agree on a shared project. They will bring the whitebuilding back to life in front of the producer's cameras. Make thata six-part series. Now some really big ideas come into play. What is authentic about adecaying building of indiscernible purpose that was never completelyfinished in the first place--the materials or the motivating idea? Isrestoration desirable, or even possible, or would radical surgery be amore truthful response to changed circumstances? These are issues facedby preservationists and conservationists everywhere. Here they areinseparable from family conflict and assertions of personal identity.The brothers study the house. They argue about the house. Metaphoricallyspeaking, they are the house. The building is described so often, by so many characters, you feelas if you've been there. That, in fairness, can be seen as somekind of accomplishment. Three floors joined down the middle by adouble-helix staircase--or coil of DNA DNA:see nucleic acid. DNAor deoxyribonucleic acidOne of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. , as we are constantlyinformed--capped by a skylight. Top floor with blue ceiling, bright asthe heavens, woody main floor with forested light, cave-like basementwith deep sea light and traces of aboriginal carvings at the base ofcedar pillars. To Graham the carvings embed the influence of Haida longhouses onthe Queen Charlottes, specifically one called Story House, which hisfather was known to have visited. That is a romantic thought, andVancouver's modern architects did honour aboriginal building inpassing. (Arthur Erickson Arthur Charles Erickson CC (born June 14, 1924, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) is an internationally celebrated Canadian architect. He studied Asian languages at the University of British Columbia, and later earned a degree in architecture from McGill University , whose career is mirrored by PackerGordon's, did more than that in his Museum of Anthropology, ahomage to the longhouse longhouseTraditional communal dwelling of the Iroquois Indians until the 19th century. The longhouse was a rectangular box built out of poles, with doors at each end and saplings stretched over the top to form the roof, the whole structure being covered with bark. spelled out in concrete.) Still, when it came toinfluences on B.C. architects, it was always California, Oregon, Japanand Frank Lloyd Wright. For a Vancouver novelist nowadays to make somuch of longhouses seems either obligatory or opportunistic. So doesmention of Eileen Gray. Graham attributes the idea behind the DNAstaircase to Gray, "by whom it is well known he wasinfluenced." This is implausible. Gray did do a house with a spiralstaircase, finished in 1929, but she was too obscure in those days tohave been a trendsetter trend��set��ter?n.One that initiates or popularizes a trend: "The Golden State, ever the trendsetter, reformed its property tax"New York. . She didn't become a trendy name until the1970s. Taylor's reference just seems one case too many offaux-knowingness. The author compensates for his shaky grasp of architectural historyby seizing every opportunity to construct a monster emblem. The housetells a story, he is telling a story. The house has a structure, and sodoes everything else in the novel--arguments and events, evenGraham's wife, who is said to be made of "thick planks ofrationalism." The brothers, it appears, are also architecturalelements--"two halves of a Gothic arch leaning in shakily toward akeystone." The two halves of the arch ultimately decide to open theirdad's building like a book, and glass in the triangular wedgebetween the covers to reveal an "honest view of the structural gutsof the thing." When things go comically wrong on the site and thehouse collapses before a throng of officialdom, it is clear the brothersare on a fast track to meet their maker. Doom is in their DNA. For someone who has invested so much thought on modernism, Taylorhas not taken its principles to heart. His structure lacks optimism andairiness and potential for emotional play. Always morphing into pattern,it crushes his deftly sketched, stylishly delineated characters intohandfuls of gravel. Fatalism fa��tal��ism?n.1. The doctrine that all events are predetermined by fate and are therefore unalterable.2. Acceptance of the belief that all events are predetermined and inevitable. is not this reader's idea of the realthing. It is irritating to be tantalized by visions of a spare moderndwelling, only to find oneself trapped inside a rigid scaffolding. Icouldn't wait to exit Story House and throw away the key. Adele Freedman is a Seattle-based writer specializing inarchitectural criticism.