prairie style
The March 31 issue of the New Yorker features a droll short story by Jeffrey Eugenides. Set in Chicago, Great Experiment mixes doses of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America with a former-Baffler proofreader’s midlife crisis. Straight out of the gate it offers a blissfully succinct critique of green building:
The gray Gothic stone of the Tribune Tower, the black steel of the Mies building just next door—these weren’t the colors of the new Chicago. Developers were listening to Danish architects who were listening to nature, and so the latest condominium towers were going organic. They had light-green facades and undulating rooflines, like blades of grass bending in the wind.
There had been a prairie here once. The condos told you so.
Just wait until he describes the interiors of the hip and aging. Spot on, Beck poster included. Also, check out Eugenides’ sweeping and perverse Middlesex—it is one of my all-time favorite reads.
I found Middlesex in the library a few weeks ago; it was amazing. It's funny we never talked about it.
Posted by:Jennifer | May 22, 2008 at 01:16 PM