Book Notes: "Towards a New Architecture" by Le Corbusier

Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This translation of Towards a New Architecture, originally written in 1923, is prophetic in many ways. Le Corbusier writes of the “machine age” much like someone now might write of the “information age”. But he is somewhat poetic, repetitive and I would not be surprised if Tom Peters (ex-Harvard innovation guru) adopted something of Le Corbusier's style. While many of the architect's ideas were controversial, and may not have functioned as desired, he foresaw many of the things that are happening today in terms of construction materials. Although I do not doubt that the way these materials have been used meet the "cheapness" but not necessarily the "good work" he envisaged (p. 284). My favourite quote: "There is no such thing as primitive man. There are primitive resources. The idea is constant, strong from the start" (p. 70).



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Book Notes: "The Shipping News" by Annie Proulx

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I have wanted to read The Shipping News since I first learnt of its Pulitzer Prize winning credentials in The Bulletin back in the 'nineties. I am not usually a fan of recent fiction but this work is very good. A back cover review cited from The Sunday Telegraph wrote of the style as "compressed" and "poetic" and this mirrors my own thoughts on the prose. What impresses me most about Proulx is that she did not publish her first novel until she was in her fifties, and The Shipping News is a masterpiece, proving that it is still possible to flower in the latter stages of middle-age. Having travelled briefly through The Maritimes, specifically Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the novel brought back memories of the frozen sea and the various shanties along the coast of New Brunswick. At the time, these sights sent me back to my childhood memories of the television series The Beachcombers (although the series is from the west coast), and what was then that strange land of First Nations peoples, "Mounties" and Quebecois to the north of the United States rarely seen on Australian television. The cold salt air, the smell of seafood, that the sea could be frozen at all - Proulx captures these magnificently while weaving a story of lost souls, like driftwood, colliding with events directed by freezing currents. Towards the end I had to try to piece together the various characters whose individuality tended to blend into one another. In this edition, a typographical error where Bunny is a "he"; and another where the character Tert Card appears as Terd Card, stick in my mind. Nevertheless, on finishing the book I was rewarded with the tingling sensation of a well-written novel and an enlightened story. It was worth the wait, lived up to the expectations that have been built up for me over the last twenty years, and encouraged me to consider expanding my reading program beyond my recent focus on early twentieth-century authors. Will The Shipping News stand the test of time and become a classic? Given that the heartache of dying communities far from the fringes of the burgeoning metropolises continues while shallow urban existence intrigues, when the façade collapses, The Shipping News might just become the "backronym" that first truly captured the phenomenon in quality literature.



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Book Notes: "The Mutiny of the Elsinore" by Jack London

The Mutiny Of The Elsinore by Jack London

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Apparently this is London's worst work where he is quite the racial supremacist while being very poor at 'doing' romance. While some parts were gripping in the lead-up to the climax, the long slow anti-climax was disappointing, although one could imagine such things happening on the high seas. I doubt that London was being such a racial supremacist in the spirit of the noble savage à la Joseph Conrad or Rudyard Kipling, rather he added this to his somewhat awkward class commentary while at the same time trying to write a Boy's Own story. However, I wonder if I would have been so put-off by the book if the short introduction did not tell me how awful the book was, compared with London's other works, before I had even started.



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