Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses by Marjorie Garber

Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses Reviews

• 
  Courtney

  Some books are just bad. Maybe the writing is sub-par. Or the ideas are stale or uninteresting. These books are easy to ignore. If you stumble upon one, you feel no guilt over relegating it to a darkened corner, re-gifting it, or returning it to the library unread. Then there are books that are bad despite decent writing and interesting ideas. It is this second category that really aggravates me. Sex and Real Estate, for example, has a provocative topic: the cultural significance of 'house' as an archetype and model. Marjorie Garber can write very well. But these decent components melded together to create a monstrously annoying book.
  
  I think one of my biggest issues with Sex and Real Estate is the structure. (If you gave me a box of red pens and a pair of scissors, I could probably make this book 25% better.) Most of the chapters are organized around different metaphors: House as Mother, House as Beloved, House as History, etc. This seems like a logical way to approach such a complex topic. However, Garber never takes time to declare her scope. She does not give an indication of what time frames she wants to concentrate on. Nor does she specify which cultural contexts she will examine. It seems as though most of her examples represent US and British cultural practices, but meshing them together without any acknowledgement is just sloppy. Her case studies are equally slap dash, jumping from Victorian literature to The Housesitter (a Steve Martin movie she seems obsessed with). It becomes very difficult to sift through these disparate, and seemingly random, anecdotes and case studies. Her main points get lost in the ceaseless shuffle of arbitrary references to houses and homes.
  
  Sex and Real Estate is also structurally weak because Garber moves between discussions of architecture, furniture, and behavior as though these three areas of research are interchangeable. They are NOT. But worst of all, the actual thesis guiding this frustrating book is not revealed until the very last page. I would not let a high school student get away with that. A bright scholar who has taught at Harvard should be confined in a dingy cell for at least one afternoon for such an offense.
  
  Let me explain just why it is so problematic to have Sex and Real Estate's thesis on the final page. As previously mentioned, the book's core chapters seem to focus (if that word can even be used in reference to this book) on metaphors. Because metaphors are organizational patterns that often reflect ideological or cultural trends, this trajectory makes sense. And it was one of the few things I liked about the book. Well, on that last page, Garber states that her whole point has been to demonstrate that houses cannot be contained by metaphors: “Throughout these pages, it has been my contention that the house can be a primary object of affection and desire – not a displacement or a substitute or a metaphor” (207). Really?? Well, why didn’t you say so? The oppositional relationship between the 'reality' of the house and its metaphors was never mentioned. Was I supposed to guess that she was trying to deconstruct said metaphors, despite the fact that her case studies all seem to justify those very metaphors?? It was a baffling revelation. And one that makes me reluctant to read any of Garber's other works. It saddens me that this woman has taught and continues to teach college students how to write and conduct research. Either she is clueless, or she's a hypocrite and doesn't take her own advice.
  
  Now I have a headache.
• 
  Stephen

  Read this some time ago and remember really enjoying it and finding it very insightful. People are indeed bizarre when it comes to all matters real estate. The parallels between "house love " and "human love" will make you giggle. I find the ruin porn of Detroit to be mesmerizing and hypnotic, but am unable to conceptualize the idea of a new "yuppie pornography." And her references to the writing of Virginia Woolf, or one of my favorites, Edith Wharton add a new dimension to my thinking.
  Oh house, how do I love thee, better than my husband or my child! It is a quick and fun read too.
• 
  Sean Chick

  An interesting book on the language of housing and its representation in literature. The early chapters were peerless, but I got the feeling as it went on that Garber lost some interest in the subject. However, this is a lively read and a wonderful window into pre-2008 America's housing boom and the boomers who drove it off of a cliff.
• 
  Devon Chodzin

  not what I expected but genuinely funny and generally perceptive
• 
  Ian

  "What is desirable is the recognizable, the already seen, the virtually experienced, the framed. […] The point may be even clearer in the case of the 'magazine–quality kitchen' featured in an advertisement for a suburban house. What makes the kitchen desirable is that it resembles not a kitchen, but a kitchen–in–a–magazine. It's easy to imagine what this might mean (slate or granite counters, under–mount sinks, cherry cabinets, central work island with bar sink, miniature halogen lighting, and so forth), and, in fact, when you're trying to save space in a real estate ad 'magazine–quality' may be very effective shorthand. But the allure of this house's kitchen is a kind of Zelig allure: the prospective buyer imagines herself or himself magically transported to the pages of Architectural Digest or Elle Décor" (Garber, pg. #16).
  
  "For yet another client, Mira's portrait of her house was 'not just a painting, but an extension of myself—something intimately my own.' These are probably not people who would sit for their own portraits, or stare with fascination at themselves captured on canvas. But they have few qualms, and much pleasure, in contemplating 'my life' and 'myself' as depicted, and deflected, through the image of the house. For we live at a time when it is the house, rather than any other kind of partner, which can be readily described as 'something intimately my own.'" (Garber, pg. #39).
  
  "In 1869 Harriet Beecher Stowe collaborated with her sister Catherine Beecher on a book called The American Woman's Home, an enlarged version of Beecher's earlier, and enormously successful, Treatise on Domestic Economy. In it they describe the 'family state,' which was the 'earthly illustration of the heavenly kingdom,' by detailing, in the most precise and specific terms, architectural plans and instructions for furniture, heating, ventilation, lighting, the planting of gardens, and household activities from child care to financial management and waste disposal. The book was pointedly dedicated 'To the Women of America, in whose hands rest the real destinies of the republic.' Rather than self–absorbed, private space, the 'home' is here imagined, through the vehicle of an intensely and deliberately practical guide, as (in critic Jane Tompkins's phrase) 'a blueprint for colonizing the world in the name of the 'family state' under leadership of Christian women'" (Garber, pg.s #52-53).
• 
  Cat

  Garber is a witty writer with a wide-ranging imagination and the historical-cultural chops to pull together diverse examples and combine them into a compelling picture of the allure of real estate, whether that allure is existential, commercial, maternal, or sexual. The book is a pleasure to read, and I like the way she interweaves personal anecdotes and those of her acquaintances and friends with literary examples (Elizabeth Bennet falling in love with Darcy's house, for example). Her touch is deft, and the reading of "The Great Gatsby" as a real estate fantasy is fabulous. I was also amused by the passages from "Auntie Mame" making fun of the popularity of fake antiques. Structurally, it's impressive that this book can hold together so many sources and approaches. Garber leads the reader through Romantic poetry, psychoanalytical theory, and close readings of "shelter magazines" (high end real estate and decoration publications). A lot of fun. Sometimes a little glib, but that's one of its pleasures as well. A refreshing book to read during our own house hunt!
• 
  Vanessa

  This book is so ghastly that I can't finish reading it. It's sat on my bedside table for months, and I just can't bring myself to read another chapter of lightly humourous observations about how people fall in love with houses just like they do with romantic partners. It sounded like a good idea for a book, but doesn't seem to go much deeper than the subtitle.
• 
  JP

  Amusing and well written - I picked it up primarily to see how and English professor conveys such a topic. She offers a solid variety of ideas about the psychology of our homes and our relationship with them. It's a fun read but neither critical nor startling.
• 
  Uzi

  amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing book for all real estate junkies....
• 
  Sue Kozlowski

  Interesting thoughts.