3/16/22

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is often described as the greatest of American architects. His works-among them Taliesin North, Taliesin West, Fallingwater, the Johnson Wax buildings, the Guggenheim Museum--earned him a good measure of his fame, but his flamboyant personal life earned him the rest. Here Brendan Gill, a personal friend of Wright and his family, gives us not only the fullest, fairest, and most entertaining account of Wright to date, but also strips away the many masks the architect tirelessly constructed to fascinate his admirers and mislead his detractors. Enriched by hitherto unpublished letters and 300 photographs and drawings, this definitive biography makes Wright, in all his creativity, crankiness, and zest, fairly leap from its pages.
Source: Amazon - September 30, 2021

Gill chronicles the amazingly long and fruitful life and career of Wright with the dual advantage of having known him yet not blindly in awe of him. He sees the flaws of the man, a deceitful egomaniac, reckless with finances, both his own and those of his clients, careless of reputation, both his own and that of the women who fell under his spell, his churlishness in hiding what he had learned by studying the work of others, especially his contemporaries.
Yet Gill remains convinced that Wright was one of the greatest architects of all time. Not every building he designed was a masterpiece—he was never reluctant to flaunt the principles he proclaimed—but the best of them are unsurpassed not only in their technical achievement but in their ability to elevate the spirit of anyone who enters.
Does this balance out the flaws, to raise the question often posed in considering such geniuses? Gill struggles not to place his assessment on these terms, but in the end must concede that while many take more from the world than they give back, Wright was not among them; he struck a good bargain with the world.
The title expresses an aspect of Wright central to Gill’s interpretation: Wright spent a lifetime inventing and discarding a series of personae, from teenage runaway who transformed himself into boy wonder, all the way to ancient sage. Gill applies his reportorial skills to explode some of the founding myths of the Wright cult, including the dream his mother was purported to have had while pregnant with him revealing his destined profession.
Together with Gill, the reader shakes his head, wondering why such an undeniably great man felt the need to embellish as he did. Yet this mystery is not nearly as great as the level of creative innovation Wright was able to seemingly “shake out of [his] sleeve,” as Wright himself repeatedly described it.
A good read, highly recommended. ( )

Poorly written and hard to get through. Quit after two chapters. ( )

Beautifully written and just plain mesmerizing as a story. ( )