THE BOOK OF ERRORS
ANNIE COGGAN (art) and MARK HAGE (text)
A Public Space Books
$18.00 trade paper, available now
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: A collection of three illustrated essays looking at the preservation of three historic houses—and the layered, messy process of reconstructing our past and reimagining history. An architect and artist, Annie Coggan delves into the history of three iconic American structures—the Henry Knox Memorial in Maine; Fraunces Tavern in New York City; and the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia—and the stories of the people and ideas involved in their preservation to consider the ways in which history is reshaped by future generations.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A literary magazine of some significance gave birth to a publishing company of some significance. I've reviewed So Much for That Winter, one of their earlier book publications of a translation from the Danish via Graywolf Press, on this blog. I've also reviewed their initial own-imprint publishing venture, the late and underknown Bette Howland's delight of a short-fiction collection, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, on this blog. As both of those were positive reviews, I think you could safely say I am in tune with this press's aesthetic.
Here you see the artwork that forms the spine of this book's conceit. It is a series of beautiful paper models, and drawings, and painted drawings, of three different historic homes that are going to be conserved, restored, or rebuilt. The specific examples I've used are those provided by the publisher; all are from the Henry Knox Memorial, a house named "Montpelier," in Thomaston, Maine. The facts about the house are: It is a nineteen-room recreation, finished in 1929, of the original space built in 1794; that space was demolished in 1871 to make way for the Thomaston Railroad. The essay about this house is in the form of letters to and from the architect of the reconstruction, William E. Putnam, to one of the commissioning parties, Miss Watts of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Are these "real," by which I mean were they written by the parties whose names are on them, and selected by Author Coggan; or are they fabrications of Author Coggan's, made to elucidate a point about the eternal and delicate process of reaching a working understanding between client and architect?
I don't think it matters.
The evidence, even of eyewitnesses, as to the probable plans of the Knox House are so at variance that we have to consider it carefully and test each bit by things that we are sure of from a practical standpoint...
I wish you would read carefully Miss Miller's description and check it up with your remembrance. Also, if she is still living, I should think that a talk between you and her might clear up many of the points about which a difference of opinion seems to exist....
really makes a difference to the way one experiences this beautiful and thoroughly satisfying melding of idea, image, and purpose. We are brought into a quotidian conversation between patron and architect, between a man and a woman both of senior years, and thus in conjunction with the beautiful art, we are flies on the walls of these moments when History, long dead even then, was being negotiated for presentation to The Future. It is always a worthwhile endeavor to learn about what goes into the making of the world thee and me see.
I see value in the exploration this approach allows of the why, the deeper why, of art and architecture pressed onto the service of History and the Monomyth of American History. The exceptionally contentious "restoration" of Fraunces Tavern, more precisely called a "conjectural reconstruction" (thanks, Wikipedia!), is illustrated in black-and-white drawings which, quite lovely though they are, suit the more angry and contentious responses to the Sons of the Revolution's major, and not uncontroversial, reimagining of the Tavern as of the 1790s (from the distance of 1904!):
"On passing the Washington statue...I thought I heard a loud sobbing... I said, 'Why weepest thou?' He said, 'Hast been to Fraunces's Tavern lately and witnessed the scoundrelly piece of vandalism that they have perpetrated upon that hallowed building, with whose walls I embraced my loved comrades?'"
—Letter to the New York Times (1906)
Daniel Libeskind, he of the master-planned Freedom Tower complex on the site of the old World Trade Center Twin Towers, would've recognized the entire imbroglio as being New York City doing what she does best: Eating her young. Nothing can ever be accomplished in the City without a decade of brangling, infighting, and public bitching.
The last of the three historic structures whose futures were assured by these early preservation attempts was famed upholsterer and flag-designer, Betsy Ross, whose residence in Philadelphia came in for a "re-configuration" to make it more suitable a setting for the probably apocryphal transfer of a flag designed by Mrs. Ross in her role as a famed upholsterer in Philadelphia society to General Washington. Since the probability is that Mrs. Ross didn't ever live in that tourist mecca, there's really no point getting exercised about it...and Author Coggan uses beautifully simple line drawings to evoke the scale of the house (it's dinky!) and the simplicity of its furnishings (spartan).
I think this lovely object belongs on the coffee tables of those whose appreciation for art is not limited to visual expressions of design, but also reaches for the "why" of art...what about this is necessary, what in this artistic expression am I going to think about and become acquainted with that I haven't, wouldn't, or couldn't otherwise?
This book is meant to close those gaps for you, elegantly, about parts of History that more often than not are so dead to us that we couldn't care less if they were there at all. I salute your vision, A Public Space Books, and your talent, Author Coggan!
