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| CD-ROM Package © Madi Luke 2016 |
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As I read this recently, I was reminded of The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski. The following is from Richard Neutra, Life and Shape. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962, p. 362—
Frank Lloyd Wright told me, I think significantly, not once but on two occasions, the story of a monkey in Malaya. It was caught by a planter, roped around the waist, and tied to a post on his screened porch. During the night the monkey bit off the rope near the post, bit through the screen mesh, and escaped into the jungle to his fellows. But they were no longer fellows to a monkey with a peculiarity—with a rope around his belly. They regarded him with hostility for being different, "and tore him limb from limb." I still remember Mr. Wright's baritone laughter which ended in a bitter smile. Frank Lloyd Wright did not simply have a strange rope around his belly—why did he link this story to himself? What really characterizes the relationship to others of the outstanding man, merely taken as the extra case of a vital individual? Is it tragedy—not only necessity—that the individual, even the best, the most alive, is really not effective , not vital, in a vacuum? Always very soon, sooner or later, he must be involved with others.
See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).
