Sex and Real Estate : Why We Love Houses

by Garber, Marjorie

• ISBN13: 9780375420542
• ISBN10: 0375420541
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-06-01
• Publisher: Pantheon

Summary

Sex and Real Estateis a witty, informative, and thought-provoking study of our complex relation to the ideas and actualities of house and home. With vast erudition lightly carried, Marjorie Garber professor of English and director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University ranges through literature, art, film, journalism, criticism, and the hard evidence of everyday experience, and gives us an acute analysis of the ways in which we think about the places we hang our hats. She discusses the House as Beloved ("Your house is the other person in your life," declares an architectural designer.), as Mother ("The house, we would like to think, loves us."), as Body ("both an ancient figure and a persistent desire"). She writes about the Dream House, the Trophy House ("We could call the purchasers of celebrity homes 'house-groupies.'"), the House as History, and the Summer House ("When you're seventeen, you dream of a summer romance. When you're forty-seven, you dream of a summer home."). Each chapter is a superb, individually constructed essay. Taken together, they add up to an enlightening and challenging exploration of one of the most familiar but also most emotionally charged elements of our lives.

Author Biography

Marjorie Garber is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and the director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University. She is the author of, among other books, <b>Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, Symptoms of Culture</b>, and <b>Dog Love</b>. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction Sex and Real Estate	3	(25)
The House as Beloved	25	(23)
The House as Mother	48	(23)
The House as Body	71	(29)
The Dream House	100	(20)
The Trophy House	120	(30)
The House as History	150	(31)
The Summer House	181	(24)
Epilogue Why We Love Houses	205	(4)
Notes	209	(22)
Index	231