In Search of Mr. Wright

Plagued By Fire
The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright
By Paul Hendrickson
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2019

Architecture’s Odd Couple
Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson
By Hugh Howard
Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2016

These two books are among the better of the recent Frank Lloyd Wright biographies, both are well-written and both wisely only cover certain aspects of his life. Plagued By Fire is a look at the way the fates had shaped Wright’s outlook on life. There is a wealth of new, properly researched, information here, including in-depth looks at Julian Carlton, the servant who killed seven at Taliesin in 1915, Frank’s father, William, who left when Frank was a teenager, and Frank’s cousin, Richard Lloyd Jones, who was a

newspaper publisher and a prime instigator of the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921. Most of the stories here have been told before but seldom with as much insight and context as Hendrickson does here.

Architecture’s Odd Couple shows how the lives of Wright and Philip Johnson intertwined from 1932 until Johnson’s death in 2005. Johnson was only in his twenties when he put on the first MOMA show of Modern Architecture, insulting Frank when he called him an “… architect of the nineteenth century.” The two were wary of each other after that, although Wright was aware of Johnson’s talents. This book gives a great look into the east coat architecture scene of the 1940s and 1950s and how these two masters competed with each other and, toward the end of Wright’s life, reconciled. Johnson was capable of assimilating various trends in modernism, but lacked the originality of Wright. Wright was not above taking inspiration from others himself (although he would never admit to it), but he rejected the International Style and Classicism that Johnson embraced. There is some overlap in the books, but they are complimentary and worth reading back to back.