I love this idea, were Bill and I rich we would definitely build a house with a bridge. Practically speaking it is kind of fantastic but I also really like the symbolism of ‘together but seperate’. I guess our own ‘bridge’ has been not getting married, not sharing bank accounts, not changing my name, stuff like that.
Although right now Bill and I are totally in love with small house living (constraints really inspire creativity and togetherness), so it feels funny to be momentarily fantasizing about owning two big houses. And nice for us to love small houses since the house we bought is small. The whole fashionableness of the ‘simple living’ movement has previously irritated me. But we use a lot of public transport, we have one car and not two, we have a small house with a single open-plan living space (kitchen/study/dining room/living room), we are vegetable gardening, Bill fixes and makes things a lot himself, we buy and scavenge a bit second-hand, we enrol our children in only one extra-curricula activity each a year, we dress Cormac in a lot of Lauca’s old clothes (yes, even the pink ones).. and look, we’re not cheap and limited by our budget, we’re fashionable and ethical.
Anyway, my favourite part of that New York Times article is this:
Ms. Lanahan, whose mother, Frances, was the only child of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, had been a Washington debutante and studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design. She married at 24, in 1972, had twin sons and a daughter and was divorced in 1988.
Being able to casually drop that into an article mid-way through shows a real ability to not gush over the F. Scott Fitzgerald connection, an ability I would not have. If you have been meaning to read The Great Gatsby but never have, DO IT. Read it because it is every bit as good as everybody says and you need to experience that for yourself (afterwards read a study guide on the novel and realise that there is even more to that great novel than you realised), and read it before that wretched movie comes out and ruins the imagery for you. Then read Tender Is The Night and marvel at how an off-the-rails alcoholic could somehow not only write something so accomplished but also observe so beautifully the decline of an off-the-rails alcoholic, as one of his central characters is just that.
Here are some quotes from Tender Is The Night:
“When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they put up”.
“Then why did you come, Nicole? I can’t do anything for you anymore. I’m trying to save myself.”
“Good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handled with gloves. Now, human respect–you don’t call a man a coward or a liar lightly, but if you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them.”
“England was like a rich man after a disastrous orgy who makes up to the household by chatting with them individually, when it is obvious to them that he is only trying to get back his self-respect in order to usurp his former power.”
“We can’t go on like this–or can we?….What do you think?… Some of the time I think its my fault–I’ve ruined you.”
See, brilliant?
I really enjoyed this. The ‘bridge’ house is divine and what you say about simple living really resonates with me. We too have a small house (which I admit, we sometimes complain about) and have just decided to see how we go without a car.
I’m interested that you are not married and don’t share a bank account. I shared a bank account with my partner before we got married – in fact, we announced it to his family the same day his sister announced she was getting married. It was a funny moment –
(sister) “we’re getting married”
(us) “we’re getting a joint bank account”
(sister) “oh, we don’t have that yet!”
I also love F. Scott Fitzgerald and I do like the movie version where Robert Redford plays Gatsby – I think it was made in the ’70s, but not sure.
I’ve ranted before about how all of my culture seems to be opposed to how we want to live. Public transit in my city is not good enough to allow us to get by with one car, so we bought two smallish cars. We bought a house in an area that was not terribly far from work (we couldn’t afford to buy in the area closest to where we work), and chose a neighborhood where we could walk to some things. Our house is small by US standards (less than 1400 square feet), but not tiny. And we have a yard- not huge, but adequate. And I love it. We do a little gardening- would like to do more, but haven’t had time to do the prep work required (we have a small slope that would need terracing).
But things aren’t designed with our small cars and smallish house in mind. Toys are needlessly big and don’t fold. We wanted a toy kitchen set for the kids but couldn’t figure out where to put it. When we go on vacation, we struggle to fit the necessary kid stuff (stroller, etc.) into our car. We once traveled around Asia for four months with just two backpacks, and now we can barely fit the gear to go away for a weekend into the back of our Mazda5.
I don’t know what my point is. Maybe just that “simple living” isn’t necessarily simple.
I recently re-read The Great Gatsby and was struck all over again by how great it is.
Although that is one thing that struck me about living in New York City. The city is HUGE but everything is teeny-tiny and I felt like I was Alice who had fallen down the rabbit hole. The shopping trolleys are miniature, you can buy little dining room tables that fold up, beds that fold into the walls, the corner shops are tiny and absolutely crammed to the ceiling with teeny-tiny things. I hadn’t thought of children’s toys but I wonder if the same applies. Would toys in New York be similarly reduced to fit the size of apartments…
Yes, the same applies to toys. In the end, the kids ended up with a folding wooden stove top that we can store away, courtesy of my sister (as a birthday gift for the 2 year old). She found it on an online shop that caters to urban kids. However, I happen to know how much that thing costs, because I’d looked at it once. It is about twice as expensive as the large plastic thing that we had no room for! And you can’t get it at the standard toy stores here (probably can in NYC).
I know. Massive case of “first world problems”…. But I guess I just want to make the point that sometimes living simply costs more than living the way everyone else in your area of the world lives.
Ok, I did not love The Great Gatsby, maybe I should try it again!
It is rather a challenge, isn’t it? In Canberra I always tried to live within walking distance of the main bus interchange so I didn’t have to use my small car as much to get to work, and could walk to town if I wanted. But it’s not easy to walk on the streets – paths don’t match up (no wonder you never see anyone out with a pram). And the bus took twice as long as driving, so I had to really be committed to the idea. Here, I live seven minutes drive from work but there aren’t paths and it’s all ridiculously hilly – it’s actually too dangerous to walk to my work. Another weird one is, I live in a small house (duplex actually) but everyone is expected to have a giant flat screen tv these days… so you have all these small living rooms with giant tvs in.
The bridge house reminds me of the houses in Big Love–separate houses for the “sister wives” joined by a big, fenced backyard and everyone got to wander in and out of all of them. While I don’t think I could share a marriage (it’s hard enough to find one person to get along with) it would be nice to have all those separate spaces to assign specific roles and styles.
I forgot to comment on this part! I have long thought at least some time spent sleeping apart would be great in a relationship. Or a room of one’s own, as Virginia Woolf posited. I love the Big Love houses too (and not the marriage either yeah). I guess people try something similar up here with all the little sustainable communities – they often have little houses and a big shared kitchen in an open area.
I always thought Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had the right idea, with their houses at least.
I thought the exact same this – Frida and Diego. A brilliant idea. Am most envious.
hear hear about gatsby, and for true lovers of the work, Nicki Greenberg’s graphic adaptation (as in graphic novel, not explicit) is worth a look.
I agree with you about the benefits of a small house. Easier to clean and easier to heat. Also, things within easy reach. Friends of mine with small babies in big houses had to buy double of everything to save the hassle of transporting things around the place. So they had two changing tables with all that goes with them, and then two cots – one for downstairs and one of upstairs. What I like most about our small flat is that I always know where The Child is in the house so it is easier to keep an eye on her.
Have you seen Kate Beaton’s comic about the Fitzgeralds? http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=197
We’ve been living in too-small housing since… uh… I went to college. Maybe it’d be different if the housing was intelligently designed so it had things like “closets” and “storage space” and, one memorable kitchen, “oven and fridge doors that actually opened all the way instead of just halfway” and “at least one counter in the kitchen.” But basically I am fed up with getting rid of things and getting rid of things and getting rid of things and still not having enough space to put my towels, pie pans, underpants, and spaghetti sauce. That said, I watch those shows on cable where people look for houses and a lot of modern houses are just vast wastes of space. I mean seriously. So I don’t want a big drafty McMansion with extra random rooms and a living room larger than my entire apartment because that is just ridiculous. (although, frankly, I would not be upset if we lived someplace with more than one toilet.)
Love that bridge house. Funny, my dream view of it for myself has my parents living in one house, my immediate family in the other, and visions of my kids skipping across the bridge to go over to their grandparents’ house.
Off to request “Tender Is The Night” from my local library – thank you!
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