“Home is more than a place … it is the ground of possibility, a place of beginning and ending (or, as the poets have it, of womb and tomb). But more and more it is also a conscious fiction.”
–Marjorie Garber
If you are going crazy trying to buy or sell a house (or went crazy long ago), this is a great book to read to understand why.
Anyone expecting silly stuff because of the title needs to know that author Marjorie Garber is a heavyweight scholar. She’s the William R Kenan, Jr Professor of English and Director of the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies at Harvard University.
As a cultural historian, she gets into literature, history, cinema, and psychology. She sees real estate as “yuppie pornography” and explains our fantasies, dream houses and topics such as the evolving roles of the bedroom and kitchen.
Educated as she is, she still learned more about herself and other humans in her experiences with real estate. If you are human (and therefore a little bit crazy), you will find this interesting.