SOLITARY TRAVELERS

In the Spring of 1977, under the auspices of the Mellon Professorship, John Ashbery, poet; Jay Fellows, literary critic; Robert Freeman, filmmaker; John Hawkes, novelist and playwright; Aldo Rossi, architect; and Joseph Rykwert, historian were invited to the fifth year studios of the architectural school of The Cooper Union. The purpose was general: to make the school a crossroads where the maker and his work were no longer heroically apart but where the guest and student, in company, could share and sense the affinities of each other’s craft.

This book is a collage of thought containing eleven Poems by Ashbery, a labyrinthine text by Jay Fellows on John Ruskin, stills from Secret World by Robert Freeman, a story by John Hawkes and essays by Aldo Rossi and Joseph Rykwert. The reader may make a whole fabric of these pieces, or may remember these encounters, chance or chosen, as a necessary experience—something is always there for the eye that listens.

Preface by John F. White. Introduction by Sean Sculley. Afterword by John Hejduk.
Designed by Janet Gold and Tom Kluepfel.

NY: THE COOPER UNION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, 1980.
VOLUME 1, 118 PAGES; VOLUME 2, 38 ILLUSTRATIONS, 6 1/2 X 12
SOFTCOVER IN WRAPS, SLIPCASED. $20.00