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Review A gifted storyteller is one who makes his subject come alive. Charles Jencks is unequivocally architecture's greatest living storyteller, He has probably produced nearly as many books and articles during his prolific career as did Le Corbusier, the subject of his latest work. In Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture, Jencks has woven together readings of Corb's writings, paintings, architecture, and city planning with pertinent (and sometimes impertinent) biographical details. It is an epic poem in the tradition of Chaucer, and can be read as such. Jencks's style is jocular, freewheeling, anecdotal, and provocative-- as he is in person. In this book there is much on Le Corbusier that has been said before, by Jencks himself as well as others. Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution is, in large measure, a revision and vastly expanded version of his Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture (Harvard University Press, 1973), drawing upon research and testimony that continue to emerge about a man whom Jencks believes to be not only a tragic persona, but a genius as well. He rewrites, splices, condenses, expands, speculates, and even offers his own chart of history so that we may easily visualize developments. Jencks is true to his signature method of interpretation, which proceeds by analogy and metaphor, with limitless imagination. However, he also follows, or leads, a trend in architectural theorizing that has become widespread in the late 20th century, namely to look to other realms of intellectual inquiry for insight and guidance. The absence of a single, comprehensive, overarching theory that might serve practitioners has led would-be theorists, writers, and teachers of architecture to seek parallels within other disciplines, such as literature, linguistics, and sociology. Jencks's references range from Noam Chomsky and semiology in the 1970s to the sociology of David Harvey and David Herf in the 1990s, illustrating that he has kept abreast of cutting-edge theory. Most recently he has forayed into cognitive science, finding in it another means for classifying (something the author claims he dislikes) the crucial facts of Le Corbusier's biography to fit a type, namely of the "typical genius," or "basically protean type" of creative individual.
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