from For the Love of Books. … Writers On The Books They Love Most (1999) “… Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture … engineering and politics and feeling ... The bridges of Eiffel. …shadowed volumes of Chicago and New York … hard, heavy materials and the design thought inspired by them. … real and imaginary but mostly real structures, and infra-structures my own narrative about people might move parallel to. … It has been a theme of mine, I am not sure why, that materials should keep their honor and identity, not be totally transformed in a work: they should show through, as in the Japanese term wobu, in the finished work -- original and resistant. … Materials to think my own thoughts with, which are others’ thoughts. To write with. What am I, what have I hoped for, how have I lived?”