Randolph,
It's because Kunstler doesn't go very deep, that he settles for
pre-fabricated "winners," and cannot bear the anxiety of being
outside the privileged circle, or at least cannot conceal his
anxiousness to pleasing the people he believes are superior.
So it's not his conservativism that rankles, it's his imitation of
genuine conservatives, his neo-conservative presumption that if
he writes, acts and advocates what the ensconced want, he will
be accepted into their comfy circle. See Home From Nowhere's
opening chapters where he gloats at being part of the gang
(I posted that obsequiousness to D-L).
He also offends, like Witold, like a number of today's popularizers,
with his promotion of architectural superficialities. This is what
links him to the real estate mavens -- and too many architectural
critics and scholars -- who emphasis the scenographic, the stylistic,
the literary, the VRML, to conceal ignorance (maybe willful) of
underlying deficiencies that remain deliberately unaddressed by
successful Trump-emulative marketing.
There are a batch of slick writers in the design field who lazily
gloss products for the market -- low and high -- with literary and
scholarly and debating tricks of the trade. They do not delve
very deeply into matters, indeed, they may be prohibited from
doing so by their publishers who are obliged to eye advertisers and
consumers as closely as Kunstler must doggily eye the gang he
wishes to sell himself to.
For this reason you are correct to note Kunstler's novelistic
tricks to sustain interest in his shallow potboilers. He also speaks
in that carnival-con fashion, as I noted in my earlier critique of
his lecture. He's not serious about architecture and planning, he's
done very little reading or research.
He writes in HFN that he got into it as a way to make a living while
he works on his, ahem, serious work. He confesses to surprise at his
commercial success: see the end of HFN. This lie is claimed as truth
by quite a number of architectural -- trade -- promoters, that you can
be paid well for hustling shoddy products.
Suzanne Stephens, among others, has sardonically remarked
on the inferior quality of architectural writing for the trade, but, as
she says, it's a pretty good living if you can live with yourself. I think
Kunstler is no more ashamed of his commercial trickery than are the
shoddy-products Nurbists and Princes.
Ha! Are not we all? Keep in mind that keeping the faith is hard
when your muse -- your faith in your purpose -- deserts, and you
still got to go out and peddle shit to the whatta-you-got-for-me
clients-consumers.
Read the end of HFN, I almost believed it was true. Then I recognized
it as one of my own well used cons, indeed, it may be the best part of
Jim's screed, at least the most useful for make-believe Princes and
make-believe artists, ahem, suffering for their art, confessing their
potboiling failure.
It's because Kunstler doesn't go very deep, that he settles for
pre-fabricated "winners," and cannot bear the anxiety of being
outside the privileged circle, or at least cannot conceal his
anxiousness to pleasing the people he believes are superior.
So it's not his conservativism that rankles, it's his imitation of
genuine conservatives, his neo-conservative presumption that if
he writes, acts and advocates what the ensconced want, he will
be accepted into their comfy circle. See Home From Nowhere's
opening chapters where he gloats at being part of the gang
(I posted that obsequiousness to D-L).
He also offends, like Witold, like a number of today's popularizers,
with his promotion of architectural superficialities. This is what
links him to the real estate mavens -- and too many architectural
critics and scholars -- who emphasis the scenographic, the stylistic,
the literary, the VRML, to conceal ignorance (maybe willful) of
underlying deficiencies that remain deliberately unaddressed by
successful Trump-emulative marketing.
There are a batch of slick writers in the design field who lazily
gloss products for the market -- low and high -- with literary and
scholarly and debating tricks of the trade. They do not delve
very deeply into matters, indeed, they may be prohibited from
doing so by their publishers who are obliged to eye advertisers and
consumers as closely as Kunstler must doggily eye the gang he
wishes to sell himself to.
For this reason you are correct to note Kunstler's novelistic
tricks to sustain interest in his shallow potboilers. He also speaks
in that carnival-con fashion, as I noted in my earlier critique of
his lecture. He's not serious about architecture and planning, he's
done very little reading or research.
He writes in HFN that he got into it as a way to make a living while
he works on his, ahem, serious work. He confesses to surprise at his
commercial success: see the end of HFN. This lie is claimed as truth
by quite a number of architectural -- trade -- promoters, that you can
be paid well for hustling shoddy products.
Suzanne Stephens, among others, has sardonically remarked
on the inferior quality of architectural writing for the trade, but, as
she says, it's a pretty good living if you can live with yourself. I think
Kunstler is no more ashamed of his commercial trickery than are the
shoddy-products Nurbists and Princes.
Ha! Are not we all? Keep in mind that keeping the faith is hard
when your muse -- your faith in your purpose -- deserts, and you
still got to go out and peddle shit to the whatta-you-got-for-me
clients-consumers.
Read the end of HFN, I almost believed it was true. Then I recognized
it as one of my own well used cons, indeed, it may be the best part of
Jim's screed, at least the most useful for make-believe Princes and
make-believe artists, ahem, suffering for their art, confessing their
potboiling failure.