03/04/2019
The 21 essays assembled here range in length from several paragraphs to a score of pages, but all are stimulating and entertaining in equal measure. After two personal and candid short memoirs about her life as a writer, wife, and mother, novelist Lurie (Familiar Spirits) follows her fancy in selections that touch on a broad range of subjects: a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at Jonathan Miller’s celebrated 1974 staging of Hamlet in “What Happened in Hamlet”; an affectionate tribute to Ted (Edward) Gorey, her best friend for decades, in “Edward Gorey”; astute evaluations of Pinocchio, Babar the Elephant, Harry Potter, and other characters from children’s literature; and appraisals of knitting, aprons, zippers, and aspects of fashion that extend her 1981 study The Language of Clothes. Lurie approaches all of her subjects with the acumen of a seasoned critic but frequently draws on her skills as a Pulitzer Prize–winning fiction writer to give shape to her thoughts, as when she wryly describes the circumlocutions in critical papers written by deconstructionists as giving “the impression that their authors are flies struggling in the sticky verbal strands of theoretical discourse.” Lovers of literature and the arts will find this a delightful and rewarding volume. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (May)
Praise for The Language of Houses: “Makes a powerful argument that how we choose to order the space we live and work in reveals far more about us…full of mischievous apercus…a mine of adroit observation, uncovering apparently humdrum details to reveal their unexpected, and occasionally poignant, human meaning.” — Wall Street Journal
“. . . a book meticulously packed with facts, paradoxes and observations…a rich compendium of information, exploring how we inhabit our homes, our offices and our places of learning, leisure and worship, from every conceivable angle, in neatly organized chapters addressing each category of building.” — Seattle Times
“Lurie maintains a light touch with such damning observations… One of the book’s best chapters treats public high schools…its insights into our vanity, and capacity for almost negligent public construction, are ripe for the gleaning.” — Boston Globe
“The Language of Houses has every quality you would expect from a work by Alison Lurie: intelligence, authority, wit and charm.” — Louis Begley
“Alison Lurie, in her lucid, jargon-free way, allows us to read what architecture is saying. She has culled the best ideas from a vast secondary literature and passed it all through the sieve of her brilliant mind.” — Edmund White, author of Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris
“The Language of Houses is an extraordinarily absorbing book—it wears its learning lightly, holding this reader’s attention the way a fine novel does. I was particularly fascinated by the linked chapters on religious buildings and museums.” — James McConkey, author of Court of Memory
“Stimulating... entertaining... fascinating.... Lovers of literature and the arts will find this a delightful and rewarding volume.” — Publishers Weekly
“Engaging... captivating... an appealing miscellany.” — Kirkus Reviews
Alison Lurie, in her lucid, jargon-free way, allows us to read what architecture is saying. She has culled the best ideas from a vast secondary literature and passed it all through the sieve of her brilliant mind.
Lurie maintains a light touch with such damning observations… One of the book’s best chapters treats public high schools…its insights into our vanity, and capacity for almost negligent public construction, are ripe for the gleaning.
The Language of Houses has every quality you would expect from a work by Alison Lurie: intelligence, authority, wit and charm.
The Language of Houses is an extraordinarily absorbing book—it wears its learning lightly, holding this reader’s attention the way a fine novel does. I was particularly fascinated by the linked chapters on religious buildings and museums.
Praise for The Language of Houses: “Makes a powerful argument that how we choose to order the space we live and work in reveals far more about us…full of mischievous apercus…a mine of adroit observation, uncovering apparently humdrum details to reveal their unexpected, and occasionally poignant, human meaning.
2019-02-20
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, children's book author, and cultural observer Lurie (Emerita, English/Cornell Univ.; The Language of Houses: How Buildings Speak to Us, 2014, etc.) offers a personal perspective on literature, feminism, fashion, and treasured friendships.
Although a few of the essays—e.g., on women's decisions to change their surnames after marriage, the meaning of aprons, or fashion's arcane rules—seem dated and others rather slight, most are engaging. Among the liveliest are the author's recollections of friendships with editor Barbara Epstein, writer and artist Edward Gorey, and poet James Merrill. Lurie met Epstein when both were students at Radcliffe—in the 1940s, Radcliffe women were "poor relations" compared to Harvard men, Lurie recalls in "Their Harvard"—and was impressed at once by her "quiet, often almost invisible brilliance" and her capacious reading. When Epstein became editor at the New York Review of Books, Lurie relied gratefully on both her editorial skill and "remarkable" tact. Also remembered with affection is the "immensely intelligent, perceptive, amusing, inventive, skeptical," and "scarily gifted artist" Gorey, whom Lurie first met at a quirky bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They took excursions to make tombstone rubbings, were involved in the Poets' Theatre of Cambridge, and, later, when both lived in Manhattan, became best friends. Gorey was inspired to write The Doubtful Guest by Lurie's offhand comment that having a young child around all the time "was like having a houseguest who never said anything and never left." Equally warm is Lurie's portrait of Merrill, whom she admired for "how intensely aware he was of language, even in the most casual and banal circumstances." One of the longest, and most captivating, essays, "What Happened in Hamlet," recounts Lurie's experience watching a month of rehearsals as Jonathan Miller directed the play in 1974, with Irene Worth as Gertrude and Peter Eyre as the beleaguered prince. Worth, Lurie writes, even offstage, emoted as if she had an audience of 500. Musings on "Pinocchio," the Babar tales, Harry Potter, and "Rapunzel" stand out among essays on children's books.
An appealing miscellany.
...a book meticulously packed with facts, paradoxes and observations... a rich compendium of information, exploring how we inhabit our homes, our offices and our places of learning, leisure and worship, from every conceivable angle, in neatly organized chapters addressing each category of building.
Praise for The Language of Houses: “...makes a powerful argument that how we choose to order the space we live and work in reveals far more about us.... full of mischievous apercus, and Ms. Lurie at her best is bracingly subversive... a mine of adroit observation, uncovering apparently humdrum details to reveal their unexpected, and occasionally poignant, human meaning.
