“His influence on the language of building is comparable to the lasting impact that William Shakespeare has had on the...
Impressionistic, personal walking tour of a handful of Andrea Palladio's villas, during which Rybczynski reins in his obvious excitement and delight in the work, creating an irresistible tension.
Rybczynski (The Look of Architecture, 2001, etc.) calls Palladio “the most influential architect in history,” and it’s hard to quarrel. From country seats in Kent to Tidewater plantation houses in Virginia to small-town banks and courthouses, Palladio's mark is everywhere. He might be considered the father of domestic architecture, bringing the language of temples and palaces to the home front. Seventeen of his villas survive, dotting the Veneto plain behind Venice. Rybczynski visits a number of them here, pointing out their nobility and orderliness, the harmonious dimensions, as if the reader were standing by his side. The writing is enticing: What Rybczynski describes feels like real news, knowledge that will make a difference. Yet the air is casual, belying his sharp eye—he's not above suggesting elements that don't work for him—as he notes the softening aspects of a recessed loggia and the warmth of plaster on the severe geometry of a villa front, or the startlingly novel effect of parallax achieved by curving the loggia, how Palladio's work is “both sophisticated and rustic, genteel and rude, cosmopolitan and vernacular.” As Rybczynski walks about Villa Rotunda's circle in a square or through the wonderful freestanding portico with Ionic columns of Villa Chiericati, better still the double-decker portico of Villa Cornaro, he traces the evolution of Palladio's style, his influences, how he took advantage of Venetian glassmaking to fill his villas with light, as well as stories of the original owners of the villas: information all carefully marshaled and orchestrated to convey a sense of drama.
“His influence on the language of building is comparable to the lasting impact that William Shakespeare has had on the English language.” No small tribute—nor overstatement. (Line drawings throughout)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-0586-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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