Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid. (The White Knight).

By Mardges Bacon, London: MIT Press, 2001. [pounds sterling]41.50

Le Corbusier in America is the fascinating but sad story of his master's attempt to woo the New World in the 1930s, even as he insulted it for timidity. Mardges Bacon has been working on this tome for 20 years and, with its 80 pages of detailed notes, it is a piece of scholarship that will not be superseded. Among her many insights are the ways his American lectures helped establish modern architecture in the academies, how he almost won a series of important commissions (before his caustic comments lost them), the role he played in bringing mass-housing to this country and the design of the UN Headquarters. Also the affair with his American muse, Marguerite Harris, is clarified: a woman he could see as a symbol of the New World and compliment in letters and drawings as 'the peasant woman of New York'. The fact that most lovers would not take this as praise suggests how complex and sophisticated were his thoughts. He also said that Nelson Rockefeller, who he hotly pursued for commissions, has 'the iron fist o f a peasant' -- though not to his face.

Modernism and the primitive were mixed in LC's mind during the '30s while Americans, reading his books of the '20s, were determined to find only the apostle of the machine. This led to continual misunderstanding. Bacon s scholarship illuminates many such points and I have only a few quibbles. She does not fully tie together his authoritarian ideas and practices; she overlooks his painting and underrates his wildly inspiring wit. His passionate writing is one reason he became the most influential architect of the last century and why, for instance, after the tragedy of 11 September, the Museum of the City of New York took out a full page add in the New York Times and used his words -- no others! -- to lift the spirits of that city. In the end, he was the white knight he claimed to be, as well as Don Quixote.