It’s a Pretty Grim Life, Actually

Back in 1978 or so I wrote a college term paper about the increasing level of despair apparent in Frank Capra’s movies, through It’s a Wonderful Life. I revised it a bit for this Web site in 1995 or so, taking into account the film’s rise to holiday classic status in the intervening years. It’s sort of gratifying to see many of my same points made in the New York Times, though without the film history elements. At least I don’t feel quite so lonely in my crankdom: New York Times’ It’s a Wonderful Life My It’s a Wonderful Life

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Book Review: Follies of Europe – Architectural Extravaganzas

Follies of Europe: Architectural Extravaganzas, by Nic Barlow, Caroline Holmes and Tim Knox. Garden Art Press, 256 pages, 286 color illustrations, 2008. ISBN 1-87067-356-5 In the United States, writing on the environments of self-taught artists tends to place them within the outsider art context or, sometimes, within a specifically American tradition of individual expression. Follies of Europe demonstrates a very different way of looking at these sites. Not only is their individualistic exuberance not distinctly American, but they belong to a tradition of highly personal outdoor extravaganzas going back at least to the 17th Century. Indeed, the book opens with

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