Lurie takes readers inside 'The Language of Houses'

Alison Lurie
Lurie

While she was writing her new nonfiction book, “The Language of Houses: How Buildings Speak to Us,” emerita professor of English Alison Lurie commented: “I’m interested in the way buildings influence our lives, from a cultural or sociological or human perspective.”

The book, published by Delphinium, is a study of architecture and its influence. Lurie’s 1981 book, “The Language of Clothes,” took a similar approach, exploring the psychology of fashion and the way people dress as a form of communication.

Readers of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist’s latest work will find her interpreting a secret language of architecture – how houses reveal a great deal about who lives in them, and what public buildings communicate.

“I got interested in other types of buildings and didn’t want to confine it to houses, so I started to look at schools, churches, art museums, stores and businesses, doctor’s offices,” Lurie said.

Lurie addresses the psychological, emotional and social meanings of these structures and more, also analyzing prisons, hospitals, restaurants, retirement homes and government buildings.

The layout and contents of interior spaces are as important as the buildings themselves, in her view. Inside, they are divided spaces that reflect the attitude and purpose of the people inside and, in the case of many public spaces, the people or patrons they serve.

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“In old-fashioned schools you’d sit in rows and the desks were bolted to the floor. The teacher’s desk was on a raised platform,” she said. “Then, you knew you were uniform. And now, they don’t do that. You have tables and chairs that move around. You don’t have your own desk, you have a locker, and you move from place to place.”

In looking at churches, she considered “the different denominations and what their buildings are telling us,” she said. While researching shopping environments, she read about “the things grocery stores do to get us to stay in the store longer. … They do things like moving the food around so you can’t always find it. Stores use light, they use space, to get you into the store and keep you there.”

Lurie began teaching English at Cornell in 1969 and retired as the F.J. Whiton Professor of American Literature in 2005.

The author of 10 novels, including National Book Award nominee and Pulitzer Prize-winner “Foreign Affairs” (1984), she has also published numerous essays, short stories and nonfiction works on children’s literature and folklore. In 2012, she was appointed to a two-year term as New York State Author by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Lurie will discuss “The Language of Houses” at Historic Ithaca's fall fundraiser, Oct. 16 from 6-9 p.m. at the Treman Center, 95 Hines Road, Newfield. Information: 607-273-6633, christine@historicithaca.org

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