In Outside Lies Magic, John Stilgoe traverses territory
made familiar through his previous six books. As he has done in the
past, Stilgoe writes about the common landscape as a place full of
meanings but often long forgotten intention. What makes this publication
unique is Stilgoe's stated goal to entice the reader into active and
self-directed learning by employing a third person explorer as a
literary device. He then suggests that the landscape is a place where
explorers can postulate a cultural history of a time and place
especially when that history is their own.
In the guise of an explorer,
Stilgoe walks and cycles through ignored if not invisible landscapes
speculating on the values that their intellectual abandonment conveys.
He focuses on the ordinary and the seemingly mundane... power lines,
strip shopping centers, interstate highways, road kill, interchanges,
main street, mail boxes and backyard fences. And in doing so, he
assembles a complex quilt of cultural, social, economic and political
patterns that reflect common but often forgotten conditions of our
uniquely American past and present. The observations that Stilgoe draws
from the patterns that he sees are both intriguing and entertaining.
We
landscape architects are generally well schooled in reading the remnant
signatures of natural processes on a site. Stilgoe's contribution to our
profession is in helping us understand cultural signatures. In Outside
Lies Magic, John Stilgoe gives us the tools and encouragement to read
the landscape through yet another lens, and by doing so, leaves us with
the ability to have a more complete understanding of place. |
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