Bushnell_Candace_-_SEX_and_the_CITY

Cardiff's imposing Civic Centre is a vast complex including a City Hall and Law Courts by Lanchester & Richards, and the University College by W D Caroë. It was hailed as one of the most magnificent examples of civic planning in Britain but, in retrospect, its deeply conservative architecture also seems both arrogant and strangely out of touch with contemporary building in the rest of Europe.

The De le Warr Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, is a superb expression of all that is best about the Modern Movement. Commissioned by Lord De La Warr, mayor of Bexhill, and built by Eric Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff between 1933 and 1936, it was an attempt to make Bexhill as attractive as exotic French and Italian resorts. It goes without saying that it failed, but the recent restoration of the Pavilion's clean, sweeping lines is a cause for national celebration.

The Royal Festival Hall (Sir Leslie Martin and the Architecture Department of the London County Council, 1951) is all that survives of the complex laid out on London's South Bank for the 1951 Festival of Britain. The festival buildings were important for the opportunity they afforded of presenting a showcase for good modern architecture and Martin's concert hall, while not exactly earth-shattering, is a timely reminder of what good festival architecture looks like.

Bushnell_Candace_-_SEX_and_the_CITY

Introduction

Before Sex and the City was a book and a TV series, it was a column in the New York Observer. This was in the fall of 1994, and I'll never forget the afternoon the editor-in-chief asked me if I wanted my own column. I immediately said yes, and afterwards practically skipped up Park Avenue with joy I had no idea how I was going to pull off this column, but I was convinced that it should somehow be about me and my friends—a group of single women all of whom seemed to have had a never-ending series of freakish and horrifying experiences with men (and sometimes with the same men). We spent hours discussing our crazy relationships, and came to the conclusion that if we couldn't laugh about them, we'd probably go insane.

I suppose that's why Sex and the City is such an unsentimental examination of relationships and mating habits. Although some people find its lack of sentiment and cruel humor disturbing, it's probably only because

the book contains some kind of universal truth. Although the column was originally meant to pertain specifically to NewA fork City (hence stories like "The Modelizers" — about two geeky guys who manage to date eighteen-year-old models but end up paying a price), I've found that there are variants of these Sex and the City characters in most large cities around the world. I still haven't decided whether or not that's scary

But most of all, Sex and the City sets out to answer one burning question—why are we still single? Now, with a few years' perspective on the issue, I can safely conclude that we are single because we want to be.

This edition of Sex and the City contains two new chapters, which were written after the book was originally published. And so, at last, the book has a real ending, in which Carrie and Mr. Big break up. Its a bittersweet ending—not just the end of Carrie's relationship with Mr. Big, but the end of her dream of finding the proverbial Mr. Big—a man who doesn't really exist. If you read closely, you'll discover that even Mr. Big himself points out that he is a fantasy in Carrie's imagination, and that you can't love a fantasy. And so we leave Carrie to enter a new phase in her life when she understands that she will have to find herself (without a man), and in doing so will hopefully be able to find a relationship.

Maybe I'm not as unsentimental as I thought.

Candace Bushnell May 23, 2001

1. My Unsentimental Education: Love in Manhattan? I Don't Think So.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1029