The handyman is a particularly fanciful construction: orphaned, illiterate, and, later, a thief, Civil War deserter, and circus clown, he mesmerizes Emily with his blond hair and pierced-heart tattoo.
Calasso is at his best as he playfully expands the metaphor, suggesting that, rather than being an anchorite, Baudelaire was actually a pioneer, whose fanciful construction eventually formed the nucleus of a settlement of his cultural heirs, from Rimbaud and Laforgue to Proust, Nietszche, Chopin, Kafka, and Wagner.
Shop fronts imitate the quirky roof lines of a Dutch village and have fanciful dates of construction -- 1862, 1842 -- inscribed over their doorways.
This Icelandic New Yorker has created a pair of fanciful, quasi-architectural constructions inspired by two of the museum's French neo-Classical period rooms.
For the Eternal Kid But for tiles that inspire more wholesome oohs and aahs, turn to "The Lego Ideas Book" (DK Publishing), by Daniel Lipkowitz, who gathers here hundreds of fanciful Lego brick constructions devised by a half-dozen obsessives in every color of the spectrum.
The latest in a series of midcareer contemporary artists to have solo shows at the Met, Ms. Sigurdardottir has created a pair of fanciful, quasi-architectural constructions — follies, you might say — inspired by two of the museum's French period rooms.
Three hotels have grown around it, the most famous of which, the 1904 Old Faithful Inn, probably inspires far more gasps, with its fanciful, rustic, pine-log construction, than the famed geyser's jets of water.
A 35-metre-high Tower for Talkers, in the shape of a fanciful, bulbous bottle, is also under construction.
For nearly two years, Mr. Appel, a 44-year-old amateur architect, had practically lived at the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Beverly Boulevard, supervising the construction of his most fanciful vision yet.
American publisher William Randolph Hearst bought parts of the monastery in 1931 with the intention of using its stones in the construction of a grand and fanciful castle at Wyntoon, California, but after some 10,000 stones were removed and shipped, they were abandoned in San Francisco for decades.
As The Economist recently wrote, airport construction in Japan has been stimulated in part by "fanciful traffic assumptions" dreamt up by civil servants seeking cushy retirement sinecures.
