U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [493]
Like the life of many a preacher, prophet, ex-horter, Frank Lloyd Wright's life has been stormy. He has raised children, had rows with wives, over-stepped boundaries, got into difficulties with the law, divorcecourts, bankruptcy, always the yel ow press yapping at his heels, his misfortunes yel ed out in head-lines in the evening papers: affairs with women, the nightmare horror of the burning of his house in Wis-consin. By a curious irony
the building that is most completely his is the Im-perial Hotel in Tokyo that was one of the few struc-tures to come unharmed through the earthquake of 1923 (the day the cable came tel ing him that the
-431-building had stood saving so many hundreds of lives he writes was one of his happiest days)
and it was reading in German that most Ameri-cans first learned of his work. His life has been ful of arrogant projects unac-complished. (How often does the preacher hear his voice echo back hol ow from the empty hal , the drafts-man watch the dust fuzz over the careful ycontrived plans, the architect see the rol edup blueprints curl yel owing and brittle in the filingcabinet.)
Twice he's rebuilt the house where he works in his
grandfather's val ey in Wisconsin after fires and disas-ters that would have smashed most men forever. He works in Wisconsin,
an erect spare whitehaired man, his sons are archi-tects, apprentices from al over the world come to work with him,
drafting the new city (he cal s it Broadacre City). Near and Far are beaten (to imagine the new city
you must blot out every ingrained habit of the past, build a nation from the ground up with the new tools). For the architect there are only uses:
the incredible multiplication of functions, strength and tension in metal, the dynamo, the electric coil, radio, the photo-electric cel , the internalcombustion motor, glass
concrete;
and needs. (Tel us, doctors of philosophy, what
are the needs of a man. At least a man needs to be
not jailed notafraid nothungry notcold not without love, not a worker for a power he has never seen
that cares nothing for the uses and needs of a
man or a woman or a child.)
Building a building is building the lives of the
workers and dwel ers in the building.
-432-The buildings determine civilization as the cel s in the honeycomb the functions of bees.
Perhaps in spite of himself the arrogant drafts-man, the dilettante in concrete, the bohemian artist for wealthy ladies desiring to pay for prominence with the startling elaboration of their homes has been forced by the logic of uses and needs, by the lifelong struggle against the dragging undertow of money in mortmain, to draft plans that demand for their fulfil ment a
new life;
only in freedom can we build the Usonian city.
His plans are coming to life. His blueprints, as once Walt Whitman's words, stir the young men: --Frank Lloyd Wright, patriarch of the new building,
not without honor except in his own country.
NEWSREEL LXIV
WEIRD FISH DRAWN FROM SARGASSO SEA
by night when the rest of the plant was stil dim figures ugly in gasmasks worked in the long low building back of the research laboratory
RUM RING LINKS NATIONS
Al around the water tank
Waitin' for a train
WOMAN SLAIN MATE HELD
Business Men Not Alarmed Over Coming Election
GRAVE FOREBODING UNSETTLES MOSCOW
LABOR CHIEFS RULED OUT OF
PULPITS
-433-imagination boggles at the reports from Moscow. These murderers have put themselves beyond the pale. They have shown themselves to be the mad dogs of the world
WALLSTREET EMPLOYERS BANISH
CHRISTMAS WORRIES AS
BONUSES ROLL IN
Left my girl in the mountains
Left her standin' in the rain
OUR AIR SUPREMACY ACCLAIMED
LAND SO MOUNTAINOUS IT STANDS
ON END
Got myself in trouble
An' shot a county sheriff down
In The Stealth of the Night Have You Heard Padded
Feet Creeping Towards You?
TROTZKY OPENS ATTACK ON STALIN
Strangled Man Dead in Street
Moanin' low . . .
My sweet man's gonna go
HUNT HATCHET WOMAN WHO
ATTACKED
SOCIETY MATRON
CLASPS HANDS OF HEROES
GIRL DYING IN MYSTERY PLUNGE
He's the kind of man that needs the kind of woman like me Completely Lost In Fog over Mexico