Present Readings and Old Memories
The View from Here. By Aymara Lorente On page 269 of the novel Rules of Civility, (PENGUIN BOOKS), by American author Amor Towles, I found and marked a passage with these inspiring and comforting words: At the times, the buildings along Fifth Avenue still looked like they had sprung from the ground overnight—disappearing into the clouds like beanstalks. In 1936, the great Swiss architect Le Corbusier published a little book called When the Cathedrals Were White detailing his first trip to New York. In it, he describes the thrill of seeing the city for the first time. Like Walt Whitman he sings of humanity and tempo, but he also sings of skyscrapers and elevators and air-conditioning, of polished steel and reflective glass. New York has such courage and enthusiasm, he writes, that everything can be begun again, sent back to the building yard and made into something still greater. . . . In the fragile ci...