Wright's Disdain

Today, Michiko Kakutani reviews T.C. Boyle's new novel, The Women, which is based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. Speaking of the book's "complicated narrative structure," she offers the following:

Unfortunately for the reader, this inorganic, needlessly complex architecture -- of the sort that Wright would utterly disdain in a building -- serves no discernible purpose.

There's much to pick at in this assertion (indeed, as always with Kakutani, in the entire review), but I'd like to focus on Kakutani's use of the word "architecture."

We can speak of a book's "structure" because the word is sufficiently general. It's moved beyond its metaphoric function so that whether we speak of the structure of a corporation, or of a building, or of a book, we are speaking literally. It's true that the word "architecture" has multiple applications as well, although in my opinion its principal and preponderant meaning has to do with the design and construction of buildings. It is, as well, a highly specific word, so that while we might refer to the design of a bookshelf, or a furnished interior space, or a car, we would only awkwardly refer to the architecture of such things. We can more easily refer to the architecture of a book, because although the inaccuracy of the word is evident when applied inappropriately to the physical, the word slips effortlessly into metaphor.

So what is especially egregious about Kakutani's portrayal of Boyle's "architecture"? Well, aside from her pegging it as "inorganic" -- organic architecture being a specific philosophy of architecture (named, as Kakutani perhaps knows, by Wright himself) -- and "needlessly complex" (organic architecture is, of needs, complex architecture. The description might be accurate if Kakutani intended for us to believe that an "inorganic architecture" requires simplicity to be beautiful; clearly, though, she is positing "needless complexity" as an inherent condition of the disagreeably "inorganic."), Kakutani pushes her metaphor back to the realm of the actual by invoking Wright, the architect, and his likely "disdain" -- she hypostatizes The Women, suggesting that if it were a building it would be the sort of building that Frank Lloyd Wright would be likely to scorn. This is a neat trick, but dishonest criticism: Wright, whose opinions about literature are wholly unknown to me, is enlisted to offer his endorsement of Kakutani's negative opinion of Boyle's book.