88. LOVING FRANK

Nancy Horan 2007

The format of this book is one of my favorites, the blend of fact and fiction; this one based on the romantic affair between famous Architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Both married with children, Mamah Cheney eventually divorced, Frank Wright stayed married to his wife who refused to set him free. Even as they questioned and rationalized this scandalously infamous affair, they defied the norms of society and continued their passionate love. Eventually Frank Wright built Mamah a house in Wisconsin they named Taliesen. This house became the setting to their love's affecting ending.

'It was Edwin who wanted to build a new house. I didn't mind the old Queen Anne on Oak Park Avenue. It was full of the things of my childhood, and I found it comforting after so many years away.'(opening lines)

"The measure of a man's culture is the measure of his appreciation." he said. "We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more."(10)

'Their deep discussions were a stark contrast to her discourse with Edwin. It was when Mamah found herself saving up insights to tell Frank-- thoughts she never would have shared with her husband-- that she knew they'd grown too close.'(17)

'I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.'(35)

'Some of his houses look more like trees than boxes. He cantilevers the roof so it spreads its eaves wide like sheltering branches. He even cantilevers terraces out from the house in the same way, if you can picture it. His walls are bands of windows and doors, the most gorgeous stained-glass designs of abstract prairie flowers. All that glass gives you the sense that you're living free in nature, rather than cut off from it.'(65)

"The world keeps going on," she said as they continued walking. "Everybody who ever lost someone thinks that. It's strange, though. It still comes as a surprise when you see people carrying on.'(112)

'Have you forgotten the very things you've said to me? You can't keep your children by having no life of your own. You said that once to me. You said, "They will know. Your own unhappiness will plant the seeds of unhappiness in your children. And they will blame you for it someday."(124)

"Finding you was like finding a safe place to think again. Before I met you, I felt I could soar at the drawing table, but I always came back to the most static prison in my marriage. It set me free to find you, to think that there was the possibility of something more expansive. You make me want to be a better man. A better artist." He put his hand in hers. "I'd be such a sad person if it had never happened."(128)

'Why is the heart that is broken considered so much more valuable than the one or the two who must cause the pain lest they themselves perish?'(130)

"I want to talk to you today about the noblest type of love-- the kind that joins the spiritual with the erotic. When both lovers yearn to become entirely one being, to free each other and to develop each other to the greatest perfection, this is the highest form of love possible between a man and a woman of the same moral and intellectual level."(132)

'How small we humans are, she thought. All our scrambling around, trying to buttress ourselves against death. All our efforts to insulate ourselves against uncertainty with codes of behavior and meaningless busyness.'(139)

'How to reconcile the deepest loves of her soul? Staring out the window, she tried to imagine a time in the future when she would explain to her children this understanding. They would have to be adults to comprehend it. But she believed they would see that her choice to leave their father was not meant as a cruel self-indulgence geared to make them unhappy. Rather, it was an act of love for life.'(140)

"Mr. Wright is way ahead of other architects. People just think 'prairie house' when they hear his name. But he's so much than that. If you listen to what he says about organic architecture, you can go build natural houses anywhere in the world. People don't understand that now, but they will someday."(165)

'What he had kept from her, though, was what she kept from him-- the terrible weight of remorse and doubt that daily, hourly sometimes, shifted inside like a cargo.'(172)

'Frank kept his calm. "I believe we can't be useful to the progress of society without a stubborn selfhood... I wanted to be honestly myself first and take care of everything else afterward. I can do better by my children now than I could have done had I sacrificed that which was life itself to me. I believe in them, but no parent can live his children's lives for them. More are ruined that way than saved. I don't want to be a pattern for them. I want them to have room in which to grow up to be themselves."(245)

'There isn't a day goes by that I don't miss you. And some days... well, I just wish for things that can't be right now. But I carry both of you around in my heart all the time. It's fun-- it's as if I have a little room inside where I can go, and there you are. And that makes me calm as can be.'(328)

'A woman with a capacity for love and life made really a... finer courage, a higher more difficult ideal of the white flame of chastity than was "moral" or expedient and for which she was compelled to crucify all that society holds sacred and essential-- in name...'(352)

Ballantine Book First Edition
356 pages
Book borrowed from the Library