Metastasis-Dissemination Book

Wolfe writes an interesting, hilarious, and opinionated account of how we ended up with all Those Buildings, i.e. those concrete boxes that look like factories that everyone understands are "art" but secretly thinks are really ugly. My architecture knowledge is pretty much limited to recognizing that architects design bafflingly expensive, utilitarian chairs (how bourgeois of me!) and that "Eero" and "Saarinen" are frequent answers to New York Times crossword puzzle clues. As a lay person, I enjoyed learning about the philosophical European architecture "compounds" with idealistic manifestos, their goal of designing for the proletariat and eliminating anything that reeked of wealth, and the havoc these white tower institutions wreaked across Europe and the U.S. (for instance, insisting that roofs must be flat in the middle of snow country). I also really liked that Wolfe doesn't pull any of his punches. He pretty much masters the art of rolling his eyes on paper by using italics, exclamation points, and quotation marks ("A color? Well, I mean, my God -- how very bourgeois!" -- only imagine this line with italics, which Goodreads does not allow). Some of Wolfe's best snark is also found in his photo captions: Under a photo of a typical steel-barred concrete structure, "The Dutch really knew how to bourgeois-proof a building." Under a photo of an austere retirement home with a single embellishment on top (a sculpture of a giant tv antenna as "a symbol for the elderly"): "It took us thirty-seven years to get this far."

Amidst the snark are some good, thoughtful points, but I have to admit that my favorite things are how Wolfe keeps shouting, "How bourgeois!" every other paragraph, and also his photo on the back cover, in which he is wearing an all-white suit and white shoes.

My 52nd and last book of the year!