June 20, 2006
Lit Without Buildings
I came across this passage in Ian McEwan’s Saturday, and thought it an especially optimistic and eloquent outlook on the modern city.
…gazing towards Charlotte Street, towards a foreshorteened jumble of facades, scaffolding and pitched roofs, Henry thinks the city is a success, a brilliant invention, a biological masterpiece – millions teeming around the accumulated and layered achievements of the centuries, as though around a coral reef, sleeping, working, entertaining themselves, harmonious for the most part, nearly everone wanting it to work.
Now if only we could agree on exactly how it should work.
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