Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life

Books about Mr. Wright, especially those that delve into his personal life, tend to grow like kudzu. Their authors start out intending to present a coherent, concise picture of the man, but they find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, controversy, and innuendo that swirls about him even today. Too many authors abandon any pretense of order and just splash it all down on paper, leaving the reader to hack through the resulting jungle alone. Ms. Huxtable's admirable book is the first Wright biography I've seen that resists the temptatation to make the reader do all the work. She tells more about Mr. Wright and about his important buildings in fewer words than any other author. Of course there are errors here and there--most of the principals are long dead, and who can reconstruct a conversation that took place eighty years ago with any accuracy? All Wright biographers, except the syncophants associated with the Taliesin Fellowship, disagree on various points. One must also remember that the Fellowship's mythmaking apparatus started up shortly after the Fellowship began, and went into overdrive after Mr. Wright's passing in 1959, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. Having to see through this smothering blanket of hagiography makes Ms. Huxtable's accomplishment all the more remarkable. Even those who think they know all about Frank Lloyd Wright may learn a thing or two from this book, and it would be hard to imagine a better introductory book for those who know they do not.

There is so much that is right about this handy and elegant little biographical volume that anyone who wants to know about Frank Lloyd Wright would find themselves in good company with the brilliant Ms. Huxtable. It is an excellent starting point and may be all that the general reader will need to satisfy a level of interest in the great American architect. Or it may send the reader looking for more--and with all that has been and is being written about Frank Lloyd Wright, that could easily become a lifelong quest. For those who do not have that kind of time to give the subject, trust Ada Louise Huxtable. She knows architecture (her skyscraper book is a classic) and her appreciation of the impact and influence of Frank Lloyd Wright comes through on every page. So does her awareness that the same genius that made such serene spaces also led a wildly tempestuous life. Her prose is spare and crisp. Her insights are keen. Having read this book, the reader wanting more about Frank Lloyd Wright would perhaps want to read Brendan Gill's "Many Masks" and Meryle Secrest's bio of the great architect, too. It is interesting that in another review of this book, on this site, "Ehringer" (AKA Keiran Murphy, the historian of Taliesin Preservation, Inc.), chooses to pick apart the book due to some minor points in what is otherwise a fine account by a recognized expert in the field. How sad. Do not let those quibbles prevent you from reading it.

In this brief biography, one learns more about Frank Lloyd Wright than they could in a 500 paged biography. The reader learns of Wright's rise to fame and his fall, feels for him as he falls in love and loses the love of his life to death, empathizes with him as he experiences an extremely difficult divorce, and see him live a life of financial woes which ultimately end up in bankruptcy. The balance between the amount written on his personal life and that of his life as a prominent architect is excellent and makes the book all the more enjoyable to read.

I need a fighter, a lover of space, an agitator, a tester and a wise man. . . . I want a temple of spirit, a monument! - Hilla Rebay to Frank Lloyd Wright, 1943 - and the result was the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Anyone who has seen Fallingwater - even just in pictures - has to stand in awe of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. He brought to the Fallingwater, to the Gugg, and to a large number of other buildings a combination of art, function, compatiblility with its surroundings and sheer genius that remains unchallenged decades later. Great genius in one area does not automatically translate into a great overall life. And in the case of Frank Lloyd Wright that overall life seems to have many versions. The version he preferred is the one he described in his autobiography. It is just a touch glorified. with the opening of the archives of Frank Lloyd Wright thirty years after his death other view emerge. Ms. Huxtable has merged all the versions of his life into an eminently readable story of the life of a genius -- excellent.

If you know any American architect, or maybe any architect, by name, it is Frank Lloyd Wright. This is just the way Wright would have wanted it. There is a story that he was a witness at a trial, and after being sworn in, he was asked his occupation. "I am the world's greatest architect," he deposed. When this raised eyebrows, he clearly loved making the explanation, "After all, I am testifying under oath." The remarkable works he produced were a product of that huge ego, as were the financial and marital crises that were present every year of his working life. It is all covered in succinct form in _Frank Lloyd Wright_ (Viking) by Ada Louise Huxtable, one of the admirable "Penguin Lives" series. Huxtable is an established architecture critic, and an obvious admirer of Wright; her book, full of praise and wonder at the works, does not skimp on the questionable morality, which did not just extend to sexual affairs but also to basic financial agreements with clients and creditors. "He never played it safe - in art or in life - and apology was not his style." Any lack of scruples is long gone; the buildings (most of them) remain. Huxtable is generous in mentions of other books on Wright, to which she refers in the text for the reader's reference. In 1932 he published his own _Autobiography_, much of which is quoted here. Huxtable makes clear with every quotation, though, that there is almost always a second or third interpretation of events, and that he wrote not so much to give particulars of his life but to show himself in "his Olympian position as the self-described inventor of modern architecture." Wright was no imitator, as anyone who examines his works can see immediately: "He remembered everything, but copied nothing, absorbing what he liked and learned into his own creative thinking." He had a hardscrabble upbringing, powered by a mother who wanted him even before birth to be a great architect. He had no formal architectural education, declaring that a conventional education would have been useless to someone of his capacities and sensitivities. He learned by moving from one firm to another until he had his own. His first marriage produced six children, but he was never a good family man. He simply, precipitously left with a lover in 1909, leaving family, debts, and unfinished projects. In his own mind, he was a moral man, but his morality was his own; he could not have been at fault, only a hypocritical society could. When the depression hit, it hit all architects including Wright. In his sixties, he published his _Autobiography_ and was regarded by others as finished; he had thirty years of celebrated buildings behind him, and no one expected him to continue, except for possibly putting out variations on what he had done before. It did not happen, and his later work was so extraordinary that his refusal to go quietly away even in his nineties is perhaps the most inspiring part of his life. He was brought back into t