 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com The most pivotal and yet least understood event of Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated life involves the brutal murders in 1914 of seven adults and children dear to the architect and the destruction by fire of Taliesin, his landmark residence, near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Supplying both a gripping mystery story and a portrait of the artist in his prime, William Drennan wades through the myths surrounding Wright and the massacre, casting fresh light on the formulation of Wright’s architectural ideology and the cataclysmic effects that the Taliesin murders exerted on the fabled architect and on his subsequent designs. |
Average Customer Rating:   Book Review Well written and researched accounts of a tragic murder concerning Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin. Good analysis, sadly lacking in needed visuals Like many, I read this after reading and enjoying Loving Frank, and I really liked it. Not a rehash of the same issues, but a good complement. Does a good job of analyzing -- not just describing -- things like Wright's architecture (how he worked in the early 20th c. to express a certain social ideal in his buildings) and why some in Wis. believe to this day he was behind the murders.
My only quibble -- and it's a big one -- is that the text requires visuals and for some inexplicable reason there are virtually none (aside from some newspaper front-page reprints which are so tiny as to be unreadable and, hence, irritating in their own right). Some of the analyses are literally based on visual evidence, so the absence of photographs, drawings, and other illustrations is both glaring and irritating. The narrative does a painfully accurate recap of the timing of the murders, based on Taliesin's 1914 floorplan -- but that floor plan isn't included. There's a fascinating analysis of how Wright's architecture changed after the murders --- one house completely changed between the pre-1914 drawings and the post-1914 final product -- but again, no visuals. Grrrr...
I assume that either some Wright foundation that owns the visuals demanded too high a price for them and the publisher refused, or the publisher simply didn't want to shell out fees. Big mistake. Sometimes illustrations just complement a text -- but sometimes, as in this case, they are critical. An alternative should have been found or the text altered because it's a big disservice to the readers.
That said, it's a fascinating read. The first section is not just a rehash of FLW's biography, but a good analysis of how an understanding of his pre-1914 life and work are important for understanding what happened in 1914. More review of Frank L. Wright's life, not all answers I was hoping for I have read a lot of books about Frank L. Wright and so didn't really need or want the first half of the book to explain his life up to this point. I found some answers to the questions I had about the tragedy at Taliesin, but was left still feeling unsure of what might have happened and what might have led up to it.
I have found The Women by T.C. Boyle to give a much better understanding of what might have happened and why it might have happened. An entertaining and compelling history of Taliesin's darker side My first exposure to Frank Lloyd Wright came in fall of 2003, when I took a tour of his Spring Green estate Taliesin. I was pulled in by the beauty of the landscape and the design, but also by the story that it had been rebuilt twice - the first time as a result of a servant who burned half the house and murdered seven people, Wright's mistress among them. A gruesome story, and yet one that garnered no questions on the tour and got as much time as the design of the drafting room.
The actions of the murderer Julian Carlton and their impact on Wright now have the necessary coverage though, thanks to William R. Drennan's "Death in a Prairie House." Drennan, professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County, has written a solid book that gives novices a picture of the famous architect and scholars a new look at his lowest point.
Drennan starts with the blueprints of Wright's life, showing how his family's Unitarian roots and his own Emersonian free spirit contributed to his architectural maturation. After years chafing under suburban comfort he entered into an affair with feminist thinker Mamah Borthwick Cheney, constructing Taliesin as their love nest. This piece was shattered by Carlton's hatchet and gasoline, and Wright's style - artistically and personally - was never the same afterwards.
Drennan's research is exhaustive, going over interviews, newspaper articles, memoirs and even decades-old gossip to piece together the full picture of Wright. He shows the opposition of Spring Green's moral residents to Wright's "sinful" ideals, how racism played a part in Carlton's motivations and suggests the killings were what removed the "prairie house" community design from his homes. The book is always reasoned, never committing to a single viewpoint until he finds historical support for it and disproved all other alternatives.
What I really appreciated about the book was its writing style: not the dry academic voice of most conventional histories but discursive, almost conversational. Drennan frequently inserts random facts or anecdotes in the middle of his sentences, and describes the crime with phrases such as "the unhappy calculus of body count." Though occasionally distracting, they remind the reader of facts that are easily forgotten next to Wright's personal drama.
"Death in a Prairie House" is an excellent work of both journalism and history, well-written and well-researched. I already plan to make a return trip to Taliesin as a result, and the tour is sure to be more interesting with a picture of the mind that built it and the blood that stains it. interesting book I had just finished reading "Loving Frank" and wanted to know what the rest of the story was. I was interested in how Frank Lloyd Wright went on with his life.
It was interesting that he chose to be buried next to Maman although he married again and had children.
Very informative. |  |
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