The subject is the human imagination-and the mysterious interplay between the imagination and the spaces it has made for itself to live in: gardens, rooms, buildings, streets, museums and maps, fictional topographies, and architectures. The book is a lesson in seeing and sensing the manifold forms created by the mind for its own pleasure.Like all of Robert Harbison's works, Eccentric Spaces is a hybrid, informed by the author's interests in art, architecture, fiction, poetry, landscape, geography, history, and philosophy. The subject is the human imagination -- and the mysterious interplay between the imagination and the spaces it has made for itself to live in: gardens, rooms, buildings, streets, museums and maps, fictional topographies, and architectures. The book is a lesson in seeing and sensing the manifold forms created by the mind for its own pleasure.Palaces and haunted houses, Victorian parlors, Renaissance sculpture gardens, factories, hill-towns, ruins, cities, even novels and paintings constructed around such environments -- these are the spaces over which the author broods. Brilliantly learned, deliberately remote in form from conventional scholarship, Eccentric Spaces is a magical book, an intellectual adventure, a celebration.Since its original publication in 1977, Eccentric Spaces has had a devoted readership. Now it is available to be discovered by a new generation of readers.
" "Eccentric Spaces" . . . makes me want to rush out in every direction at once and reexamine all I have ever seen. You can hardly ask a book to do more than that." -- Anatole Broyard, "New York Times" " It awakens the reader to the space around him, and it is a reminder of how much we want from the world." -- Richard Todd, "Atlantic Monthly"
& quot; Eccentric Spaces . . . makes me want to rush out in every direction at once and reexamine all I have ever seen. You can hardly ask a book to do more than that.& quot; -- Anatole Broyard, New York Times & quot; It awakens the reader to the space around him, and it is a reminder of how much we want from the world.& quot; -- Richard Todd, Atlantic Monthly
""Eccentric Spaces" . . . makes me want to rush out in every direction at once and reexamine all I have ever seen. You can hardly ask a book to do more than that."--Anatole Broyard, "New York Times""It awakens the reader to the space around him, and it is a reminder of how much we want from the world."--Richard Todd, "Atlantic Monthly"
"Eccentric Spaces.".. makes me want to rush out in every direction at once and reexamine all I have ever seen. You can hardly ask a book to do more than that.--Anatole Broyard ""New York Times" "
Eccentric Spaces... makes me want to rush out in every direction at once and reexamine all I have ever seen. You can hardly ask a book to do more than that.
--
Anatole Broyard "
New York Times "
