mattdube 's review for:

Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture by Lisa Robertson

4.0

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This collection of essays is a little odd--the bulk of the book is taken up with the "occasional work," which at least read like catalog essays for art shows that deal, at least tangentially, with architecture. So, pictures of fountains or estates or the furnishings of turn of the century French apartments. Robertson's focus, she tells us early on, is the way money makes boundaries soft, so the way that money manifests in successive layers of intention and revision and process. But really, when you read these, what you find is a lively intelligence poking around at some really striking cultural artifacts. It's hard to explain, but sometimes you get long, didactic, and scholarly, like an essay on the role strawberries played in England in Austen's time (to shed light, indirectyl, on Sense and Senbility, IIRC). Others are shorter, more lyrical and occasionally gnomic. The best, of course, inhabit a middle ground, so I particularly liked an essay on Vancounver's mixed history with decorative fountains and water features, and there's a strong essay as well on blackberries, which is maybe the diminishing echo of the longer piece on strawberries. That section of the book ends with a strange essay on shopping at Value Village, which has made its way all the way here to Missouri, which might equally trouble and delight Robertson.

The seven walks are actually a long single essay, and more narrative than most of what comes before, as the speaker and a companion she calls the guide take a day walking together and have encounters in an urban environment. I found this one maybe a little too diffuse for me, too many flares off the edges of language. I liked its peripatetic commitment, but I couldn't really follow it where I think it was leading me.