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Bold Ventures
- Author
- Charlotte Van den Broeck
- Narrator
- Gail Shalan
- Publisher
- Tantor Media, Inc
- Publish Date
- 27 December 2022
- Run Time
- 9 hours 7 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
In thirteen fascinating chapters, Charlotte Van den Broeck goes in search of buildings that were fatal to their architects—architects who either killed themselves or are rumored to have done so. They range across time and space from a church with a twisted spire in seventeenth-century France to a theater that collapsed mid-performance in 1920s Washington, DC, and an eerily sinking swimming pool in the author's hometown. Drawing on a vast range of material, from Hegel and Darwin to art history, stories from her own life, and popular culture, Van den Broeck brings patterns into focus as she asks, What is that strange, life-or-death connection between a creation and its creator?
Threaded through each story is the author's meditation on the question of suicide—what Albert Camus called the "one truly serious philosophical problem"—in relation to creativity and public disgrace. The result is a profoundly idiosyncratic book, breaking ground in literary nonfiction, as well as providing solace and consolation to anyone who has ever attempted a creative act.
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Details
- Author
- Charlotte Van den Broeck
- Narrator
- Gail Shalan
- Duration
- 9 hours 7 minutes
- Release Date
- 27 December 2022
- ISBN
- 9798765095966
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Tantor Media, Inc
- Genre
- History of architecture, Biography: general, Individual artists, art monographs, Individual architects and architectural firms, Individual photographers, Psychology, Sociology: death and dying
Synopsis
A prize-winning Belgian poet explores the nature of creative endeavor—the godlike ambition, the crushing defeat of failure—through the stories of thirteen tragic architects.In thirteen fascinating chapters, Charlotte Van den Broeck goes in search of buildings that were fatal to their architects—architects who either killed themselves or are rumored to have done so. They range across time and space from a church with a twisted spire in seventeenth-century France to a theater that collapsed mid-performance in 1920s Washington, DC, and an eerily sinking swimming pool in the author's hometown. Drawing on a vast range of material, from Hegel and Darwin to art history, stories from her own life, and popular culture, Van den Broeck brings patterns into focus as she asks, What is that strange, life-or-death connection between a creation and its creator?Threaded through each story is the author's meditation on the question of suicide—what Albert Camus called the "one truly serious philosophical problem"—in relation to creativity and public disgrace. The result is a profoundly idiosyncratic book, breaking ground in literary nonfiction, as well as providing solace and consolation to anyone who has ever attempted a creative act.
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