Scenes in America Deserta

Banham, Reyner

ISBN 10: 0500272786 / ISBN 13: 9780500272787

Published by Thames & Hudson Ltd, London, 1984

About this Item

All Images Are Provided By Website, Please Contact Us For Photos If Desired Book Is In Fair Condition For Age Spine Worn At Top And Tail, Cover Corners Bent, Spine Sunned, Edges Rubbed Binding Secure, Adhesion To Covers Degraded Somewhat Pages Clean And Bright Throughout Previous Owner Has Left A Book Plate In The Front Of The Book.

Seller Inventory # 046059

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Scenes in America Deserta
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd, London
• Publication Date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0500272786
• ISBN 13: 9780500272787
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

In Scenes in America Deserta , Reyner Banham steps aside from his familiar role as an architectural historian and confesses himself a delighted, intrigued, but puzzled visitor to the arid lands of the American Southwest.What delights Banham most is visual pleasure, and this book is first and foremost a celebration of the pure visual response of a four-wheeled voyeur. What intrigues him is the works of man - the ancient pueblos and the modern observatories, the fantasies of Las Vegas and the Spanish missions, Frank Lloyd Wright and Paolo Soleri.What puzzles him is his response as the archetypal British tourist - the discovery that the desert is beautiful in his eyes in a way that no other landscape has ever been. This unsettling discovery sends Banham on a search for the roots of this response. He seeks explanations in the works of writers is various as Gaston Bachelard, Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury early historians and explorers, the American solitary and aesthete John van Dyke (author of the classic The Desert , and Charles Doughty the English Arabist (author of Travels in Arabia Deserta ).