Bold Ventures
Thirteen Tales of Architectural Tragedy
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- US$13.99
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A prize-winning Belgian poet explores the nature of creative endeavor—the godlike ambition, the crushing defeat of failure—through the stories of thirteen tragic architects.
In thirteen fascinating chapters, Charlotte Van den Broeck goes in search of buildings that were fatal to their architects—architects who either killed themselves or are rumored to have done so. They range across time and space from a church with a twisted spire in seventeenth-century France to a theater that collapsed mid-performance in 1920s Washington, DC, and an eerily sinking swimming pool in the author’s hometown. Drawing on a vast range of material, from Hegel and Darwin to art history, stories from her own life, and popular culture, Van den Broeck brings patterns into focus as she asks, What is that strange, life-or-death connection between a creation and its creator?
Threaded through each story is the author’s meditation on the question of suicide—what Albert Camus called the “one truly serious philosophical problem”—in relation to creativity and public disgrace. The result is a profoundly idiosyncratic book, breaking ground in literary nonfiction, as well as providing solace and consolation to anyone who has ever attempted a creative act.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this gorgeous and roving debut, Belgian poet Van den Broeck (Chameleon) recounts her odyssey researching the lives of 13 architects who all died by suicide, some under mysterious circumstances. Whether from stress, public pressure, flaw in design, or a fatal passion, the reasons for each death remain unknown, and Van den Broeck's search for the truth carries her across Europe and into centuries past. While musing on Gaston Eysselinck's (1907–1953) post office building in Ostend, Van den Broeck reveals that the Belgian architect's "unyielding nature" and "insistence on having his own way" resulted in his expulsion and permanent ban from entering the building site in June 1953 (six months later, Eysselinck would die). She also details how British military engineer William Skinner's "tale of suicide"—used as a lure to attract tourists to the 18th-century Scottish fortress Fort George—"perpetuates the idea that architects who fail commit suicide." Seeking to find "the line between creator and creation," Van den Broeck's exploration extends beyond the lives and works of her subjects, turning into both a philosophical meditation on creativity and a brilliant character study of misunderstood artists. The result is a genre-bending work that's sure to fascinate those interested in art and architecture, as well as anyone curious about the dangerous mechanisms of the creative mind.
