The Brooklyn Bridge is many things to many people. It stands as a
remarkable monument to the courage and perseverance of the
Roeblings, father and son, whose lives it took in the making. To
artists and writers, it stands as an inspiration. Alan Trachtenberg
has researched with loving care the facts about the Brooklyn
Bridge, its conception and building by the Roeblings, the obstacles
overcome in completing the structure, not the least of which was
Good Old Boss Tweed. After the facts comes the symbol, and the
results in literature. The final chapter deals at some length with
Hart Crane's epic poem "The Bridge." The evident feeling of the
author for his subject informs his writing about it. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Fourteen of Walker Evans's evocative photographs of Brooklyn
Bridge, most of which have never been published, appear in this
edition of Alan Trachenberg's "Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol."
In the new afterword Trachenberg explores the history of Hart
Crane's "The Bridge," especially the poem's integral relationship
with the powerful photography of Evans.
" Brooklyn Bridge] is familiar in so many movies, in so many stage
sets and, as Mr. Trachtenberg shows in this brilliant . . . book,
it is at least as much a symbol as a reality. . . . Mr.
Trachtenberg is always exciting and illuminating."--"Times Literary
Supplement
""The book is a skillful and insightful synthesis of materials
about Brooklyn Bridge from such diverse fields as history,
engineering, literature and art. Essentially it asks the question
of why Brooklyn Bridge achieved such great impact on the nineteenth
century American imagination and why it has continued to have a
significant impact on twentieth century art and literature. In
addition to its exploration of the bridge's symbolic significance,
which includes perceptive analyses of such particular works as Hart
Crane's great poem cycle and the paintings of artists like Joseph
Stella, the book also includes a solidly researched account of the
conception, planning and construction of the bridge. Trachtenberg's
account of the intellectual and cultural sources of the bridge is
particularly fascinating in its demonstration of the convergence of
many different philosophical and ideological currents of the time
around this great engineering enterprise, illustrating as
effectively as any discussion I know the complex interplay of ideas
and material culture."--John G. Cawelti, University of Chicago
"Alan Trachtenberg's "Brooklyn Bridge" is a fascinating story, the
philosophic genesis of the idea in Europe, John Roebling's heroic
effort to translate it into masonry and steel, and the meanings
that Americans attached to the physical object as an emblem of
their aspirations."--Leo Marx, Amherst College, author of "The
Machine in the Garden"
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