Who Seeks to Please

Jim McPherson is an architect, no longer young but still quietly ambitious. He watches with acid distaste as each new outrageous, extravagant, willfully transgressive building gets all the publicity, and wonders-how the hell did this happen? Then he finds himself designing one of his own. An old acquaintance, now a mysterious, manipulative figure of great means and even greater will, has drawn him into a project that promises to violate every principle he holds dear. The struggle with habit and conscience is trying. But the process transforms him, and Jim at last produces, with full willing participation, a building so appalling that it not only inspires local opposition but triggers a freakish mishap that lands everyone in court. The flamboyant opposing counsel attempts to put the whole of twenty-first century architecture on trial, in all its irrational exuberance and iconic exhibitionism. An unexpected judicial denouement is only the first of a number of surprising outcomes for the principals and for the notorious building, which itself serves as both impetus and arena for several frenzied scenes of deranged public behavior. Moby-Dick meets Monty Python in this surreal unfolding, set against the dark backdrop of post-9/11, pre-crash America: at war abroad and with itself, distracted by celebrity and poorly served by its institutions.