For those into extremely rare architectural manuscripts, but don’t have money or the means to see them, the Art Institute’s online publication of Marion Mahony Griffin’s “The Magic of America” should make it worth switching to broadband. Written as an illustrated memoir of her and her husband Walter Burley Griffin’s work, the book has reached cult status among architects, despite (or perhaps, because of) only being available in the form of three precious copies in Chicago and New York. “The thing has been mined as a quarry for those looking for a particular fact or point of view,” says Jack Brown, Director of Libraries at the Art Institute. “But if you step back and read all of it, you start to see it has clear themes.” The massive 1400-page manuscript, which took almost two years to digitally transfer, features approximately 650 illustrations and a narrative that isn’t particularly flattering to architectural superstar Frank Lloyd Wright, who the Griffins worked with. “Marion had a very low view of him, a very negative view,” Brown says, explaining that Marion had accused Wright of usurping credit for some of her husband’s ideas. You can find the book at www.artic.edu/magicofamerica/.
We Can’t Delay Our Joy: An Interview with Roger Reeves About His New Book, “Dark Days: Fugitive Essays” Reeves has a shelf full of honors, but his new book, “Dark Days,” is not poetry, but essays. In rich and heady prose, Reeves mixes memoir, theory and literary criticism. His subjects range from an opera singer breaking a silence curfew by singing in the streets to the “hush harbors,” where enslaved people would steal away to pray.
Lit 50 2023: Who Really Books In Chicago Our role in the world seems increasingly ephemeral, which is why so many of us take refuge in the endurability of words on paper, whether in novels, poems, essays or biographies. And Chicago's role in the world of literature has never been stronger.
