Volume 33, Number 19 · December 4, 1986
A House Is Not a Home
By Diane Johnson
Home: A Short History of an Idea
by Witold Rybczynski
Viking, 256 pp., $16.95
House
by Tracy Kidder
Avon, 341 pp., $4.50 (paper)
The Englishman's Room
edited by Avilde Lees-Milne, photographs by Derry Moore
Salem House, 144 pp., $27.50
Designs for Interiors: Catalog to the Exhibition
by Stephen Calloway
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 40 pp., £2.50
'Let Nellie Melba sing that home-sweet anthem over our great land again—we are safe from the depredations of art,' writes William Gass on the front page of The New York Times Book Review,[1] dissenting from the implications of Witold Rybczynski's amusing book Home. Rybczynski has two aims, first to trace the history of our ideas of comfort (and the corollary notions of domesticity, coziness, intimacy) from their beginnings in hovels and chill medieval halls where people were indifferent to them, or knew no better, and lived in the presence of dozens of other people, slept many to a bed, and staved off drafts with portable hangings. Rybczynski has discovered many absorbing facts about our domestic evolution, and shows what a lot of human thought has gone into the modern chair, or attitudes about fresh air, or a room of our own.
Review, 3881 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |