![]() ![]() The Hotel Caiette, too, is secluded in the deep wilderness, accessible only by rarified transportation and formed using large sheets of glass that reflect its surroundings. In contrast, the architectural earmark of wealth in the 21st century is the appearance of transparence-whether by glass skyscrapers or tech-firm campuses secluded in wilderness retreats. Such a style may partly comprise the novel’s setting, with its stately, multi-generational stories of wealthy families. Some of the wealthiest early 20th-century architecture celebrated expansive, opaque surfaces, employing gothic ornament and substantive materials like marble and iron. Part of the hotel’s symbolic character, however, lies in its most salient aesthetic features. It is a location to which the characters return continually, either physically or mentally. ![]() So often, the wealthy aspire to separate themselves from the messy realities of modern life, and this glass hotel would seem to provide them that opportunity. This is a type of art that closely approximates life, and a remarkable accomplishment for Mandel, whose prose style in this novel is more transparent and less deliberately fussy and literary than in Station Eleven. As for unattainable desires, the hotel gives an illusory promise. The pleasure, which in the case of The Glass Hotel is abundant, lies in the patterns themselves, not in anything they mean. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |