James Lileks

I picked this up after a friend's review, not because I have any great interest in interior design, but because I was sort of hoping to see an echo of my parents' kitchen when we first moved in, a hideous display of avocado green--the appliances to the carpet--and dark brown wood accents on cabinets and paneling.
But Interior Descecrations is a level above the common 1970s ranch house. It contains pictures from designer-level showrooms and appropriately snarky commentary alongside. show more Apparently the book's genesis sprung from a website devoted to the visual atrocities of the period.

Amusing, to be sure, but these are hardly the more common visual manifestations that so wounded the senses. Although I do seem to remember a friend's kitchen that resembled this:



Honestly, who was the brain trust that convinced people to carpet their kitchens?!? Did they not have children in the 70s?

Commentary is meant only to amuse, not inform, with witty observations:

"To understand the full visual horror of this era, you have to visualize a man in plaid pants sitting on the sofa. Or any patterned pants, for that matter: this was a sofa designed to clash with humans. Nude people would clash with this sofa. Albino nude people would clash with this sofa. The Invisible Man would clash with this sofa. It is one of those perfectly rare pieces of furniture that clashes with itself. Just looking at it makes you feel as if you've bounced down the stairs in a box of cymbals."

"Fighting centipedes? A close-up of one's intestinal lining Difficult to say. But you can be sure the designer chose this scheme because it 'drew the eye upward.' Of course, one could say the same thing about the Hindenburg disaster."

"Here we have a mix of old green crap, new green crap and some stunning green transitional crap, all of which serve to give this room the exhausted, mealy flavor of overcooked vegetables."

That's the one!

These are horrifying photos with commentary worth of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is a combination guaranteed to amuse--in small doses, as it will surely overwhelm in larger ones--much like these rooms.



My eyes!

As a bonus for those who want to consider reading, check out one of Lileks' pages. It's typical of the book commentary. And a seriously hideous room.
http://lileks.com/institute/interiors/71book/5.html show less

I love Lileks books as he is about the most sarcastic and witty author I know of. This book gathers parental advice from about 1915 on up to the early 60's and mercilessly makes fun of it. As Lileks himself says in the introduction, "This book is so unfair...for the most part they (the experts) got it right...But when they were wrong, they were brilliantly wrong. Incandescently wrong." Probably my favorite in the book is an old ad, maybe from the 40's, featuring an enraged father wielding a show more hairbrush as he chases a terrified little boy down the front porch. The ad copy has the boy saying," If he spanks me, I'm gonna run away from home!" The ad was for a children's laxative product! Maybe the parent was meant to show the picture to their own child and scare the crap out of them. show less

This book is gold.

As a refugee of the 70's myself, complete with lingering nervous ticks in the presence of goldenrod kitchen appliances, geometric wallpaper and shag rugs, I can't recommend this book highly enough. As the author says, it's important to learn from history so we don't repeat it.

The spreads are, for the most part, so god-awful you just have to laugh. If they're too painful to laugh at, the author's writing will numb the pain: he holds nothing back and just about all his show more commentary had me howling out loud.

Buy or borrow this book - even if you didn't live through the 70's, it's a cautionary tale about what happens when you try too hard to be cool and have more money than sense. If nothing else, you'll laugh.


[PopSugar 2015 Challenge: A Funny Book] show less

All too familiar! In 1978 I moved into a house that had been decorated according to the aesthetic which Lilek hilariously demolishes in this book. It had metallic greeny-silver wallpaper - with flocking! -, huge orange-and-brown geometric wallpaper (different patterns for different rooms) and a tiny room wallpapered past the point of claustrophobia with a metallic-shocking-pink-fire-engine-red pattern. It took many hours to scrape it all off the walls. The scary thing is, after reading this show more book, it suddenly occurs to me that they may have done all that right before selling to make the house more attractive. The scarier thing is that earlier in the decade I probably admired some of this stuff, although in the case of seventies design it was difficult to distinguish aesthetic attraction from horrified fascination. Lilek's wicked comments literally are laugh-out-loud funny, so be warned before trying to read the book in public. show less