House (1985)

There's a lot to like about this account of building a house—a specific house, in Amherst, Massachusetts, built from the ground up in six months in 1983. In one way it's like a million conversations we've all had about buying and dealing with real estate, but it goes to another level beyond mortgages and home improvement when the house is built from scratch. Tracy Kidder's great stroke is to focus on something so ordinary we almost take it for granted—the enormous complexity (even in 1983 when technology was simpler) of building a house for a nuclear family of four or so. Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows how insanely complicated it is with negotiation and managing details and cost. Designing and building one is magnitudes more complex and expensive. Kidder traipses along with the architect, owners, and builders for a look at how one house comes together. It's enjoyable to read and became famous as a type of journalism that flourished in the '70s and '80s, led by figures such as John McPhee. It has a friendly personal style, yet is researched and written with rigor, perhaps branching off from New Journalism. It was popular in reading groups. House does feel a little dated these three decades later. The real estate market has changed, though maybe not as much at this level. The people building this house are affluent, educated, and professional—they are still the people building houses today. And the builders, though arguably a dying breed of craftsman, certainly at mass levels, may still be around too, but I suspect in fewer numbers with these aesthetic ambitions. No doubt the difficulty of building a house is at least as imposing. It's a matter of degree. All the problems documented here are likely worse now—perhaps even enough that what we see here is vanishingly rare, and relatively easy. As the blurbers point out, the need for shelter is one of the most common and profound needs we share, even in the somewhat pedestrian context of modern life. Maybe what I'm missing is the element of climate change, which seems so pervasive in everything now and was mostly unknown in 1983 (as with cyberattacks and pandemics). True confession, I find swapping or listening to stories about real estate mostly tiresome. It dragged things down a bit for me here. You may feel differently. But the details of building a house, including the business side, are amply documented in House and often fascinating. It's a good example of this type of journalism, modest yet impressively done.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.