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AKICOLJ: Is this an original statement?
Oct. 4th, 2010 05:12 pmSpeaking about the city named in her title, Venice Observed (1963), Mary McCarthy says:
"Nothing can be said here (including this statement) that has not been said before." {italics in original, p. 12}
Since reading that, I've regarded it as a challenge. The McCarthy Challenge, if you will, not unlike the Turing Test.
I think I may have met it.
Looking at this picture of the Grand Canal at night, I thought about how the Grand Canal can be thought of as Venice's true "downtown," snaking through the city. More than that, with the illuminated common front of the faces of the palazzi, such a downtown tied to a thoroughfare reminded me nebulously of Wilshire Blvd.
Which is what stopped me up, right there.
So, try this:
"Reyner Banham, in Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971) called Wilshire Blvd, "the first linear downtown." It's a phrase that stuck, and anyone who has seen the two-by-two march of high-rises along its length knows the truth of it. But Banham was wrong about it being "first." Centuries before Wilshire Blvd was built, the world had an example of a linear downtown: the Grand Canal in Venice."
O wise and knowledgeable LJ readership... Is that an original observation? Can you find who said it before me, if not?
"Nothing can be said here (including this statement) that has not been said before." {italics in original, p. 12}
Since reading that, I've regarded it as a challenge. The McCarthy Challenge, if you will, not unlike the Turing Test.
I think I may have met it.
Looking at this picture of the Grand Canal at night, I thought about how the Grand Canal can be thought of as Venice's true "downtown," snaking through the city. More than that, with the illuminated common front of the faces of the palazzi, such a downtown tied to a thoroughfare reminded me nebulously of Wilshire Blvd.
Which is what stopped me up, right there.
So, try this:
"Reyner Banham, in Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971) called Wilshire Blvd, "the first linear downtown." It's a phrase that stuck, and anyone who has seen the two-by-two march of high-rises along its length knows the truth of it. But Banham was wrong about it being "first." Centuries before Wilshire Blvd was built, the world had an example of a linear downtown: the Grand Canal in Venice."
O wise and knowledgeable LJ readership... Is that an original observation? Can you find who said it before me, if not?
