The belly of an architect

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Summary

Stourley Kracklite, a burly middle-aged American architect, is in Rome to organize a large-scale exhibition of the work of Etienne-Louis Boullee (1728-1799), a visionary French architect. His wife ...

Stourley Kracklite, a burly middle-aged American architect, is in Rome to organize a large-scale exhibition of the work of Etienne-Louis Boullee (1728-1799), a visionary French architect. His wife Louisa is along, and a little bored with his cerebral fixations. Surrounded by Roman art and architecture--whose perfect scaling and Classicist surfaces he has always admired--Kracklite is overcome by narcissistic jealousy. Amidst the graceful clean domes, virile statues, and sturdily parallel columns of Roman monuments, Kracklite suspects Louisa of trying to poison him as his prodigious gut begins giving him searing pains. Anxious and paranoid, he's undone by his fear that despite his internal inspirations, an architect is a speck of a thing compared to what he builds--huge, material spectacles that far outlive their progenitors.

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