The Grand Hotels (Of Joseph Cornell)

Robert Coover takes us through the looking-glass of Joseph Cornell’s boxes into a world of “Grand Hotels” we never dreamed of. Rooms are accessed via ferris wheel. They open onto crystal cages, night voyages, sand fountains. They lead us back to childhood, to forgotten games, to sleeping princess who do not await a prince and, finally, home, poor heart. Funny and wistful by turns, these brilliant vignettes explore the nature of desire and the melancholy of fulfillment. As the author says, they are also an “architectural portrait of the artist,” with biographical information “built into the construction of the text like girders, brickwork or d cor.”