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Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright
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About Plagued By Fire: The Dreams And Furies Of Frank
Product Description Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as a rank egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius. Harder to detect, but no less real, is a Wright who fully understood, and suffered from, the choices he made. This is the Wright whom Paul Hendrickson reveals in this masterful biography: the Wright who was haunted by his father, about whom he told the greatest lie of his life. And this, we see, is the Wright of many other neglected aspects of his story: his close, and perhaps romantic, relationship with friend and early mentor Cecil Corwin; the eerie, unmistakable role of fires in his life; the connection between the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the murder of his mistress, her two children, and four others at his beloved Wisconsin home. In showing us Wright’s facades along with their cracks, Hendrickson helps us form a fresh, deep, and more human understanding of the man. With prodigious research, unique vision, and his ability to make sense of a life in ways at once unexpected, poetic, and undeniably brilliant, he has given us the defining book on Wright. Review “Hendrickson. . . employs tremendously rigorous research to interrogate the myths that hang around his larger-than-life subject. His is not an effort to exonerate (or make excuses for the bad behavior of yet another white male artist!) but to dig deeply into who Frank Lloyd Wright really was. . . Hendrickson’s persistent and expansive curiosity, which has driven books on the Vietnam era and the American South, among other subjects, also takes readers beyond Wright in important, revelatory ways. . . Passing through [Wright’s] darknesses makes you see his buildings, and all that flow, beauty and light, in a new way.” —John Glassie, The Washington Post “Hendrickson has designed a vast, sweeping book, one that, along the way, corrects some of the canards told by Wright himself. . . In his hands Wright’s life emerges with new clarity as a Shakespearean scale drama. . . Hendrickson makes it impossible to leave this book without a bigger thought about structures and the dramas that play out within them: that creating a building can be an act of love but also of risk—more for some than for others.” —John Freeman, The Wall Street Journal "Art history, in general, is often infected with one of two diametrically opposed ailments: an obsession with an artist or architect’s biography, or a willful ignorance. . . Hendrickson’s background in journalism is what makes Plagued by Fire such a wonderful addition to our understanding of Wright. . . [The book] is not seeking to validate the field of art history or Modern art. While Hendrickson clearly appreciates the architect and his work, Wright is not above his critical examination." —Chris Naffziger, St. Louis Magazine “Hendrickson’s focus is on the all-too-often overlooked evidence of Wright’s own vulnerabilities, so the book’s most moving passages come from fresh insights from the architect’s archives. . . Plagued by Fire aims not to examine the work of an architect but rather to render the architect with human character.” —John Gendall, Architectural Digest "The contradictory Wright who emerges, both hateful and human, is probably the truest portrait of the man we have yet." —Marcus Field, Evening Standard “Resisting the myths and hagiography of Wright, Hendrickson wears his encyclopedic knowledge of the architect’s creations lightly and evokes the emotional and psychological life of this gifted man who was cursed by regret and remorse stemming from tragic, racially charged conflagrations in his life. Hendrickson is distinguished by his brilliant ability to find just the right angles on each of his disparate subjects, with multiple perspectives inspiring a whole new way of seeing an American icon.” —The National Book Review “Compelling. . . There is always something slightly appalling about genius, and what Hendrickson achieves is to humanize his
