A Tour of the Darkling Plain: The Finnegans Wake Letters of Thornton Wilder and Adaline Glasheen

by Thornton Wilder, Edward M. Burns (Editor), Joshua A. Gaylord (Editor)

These unpublished letters between the esteemed teacher and literary critic, Adaline Glasheen, and the great American writer, Thornton Wilder, were written over a twenty-five year period, from 1950 to 1975. They reveal the probing energy and encyclopedic knowledge they each brought to Joyce's book, back when it was still a most mysterious work. Glasheen is well known as the author of the ground-breaking Census to the Wake, while Wilder was for many years an avid amateur reader and interpreter of the book (for years he traveled with a densely annotated copy of the book), and drew on it for his play, The Skin of Our Teeth. These letters are maps of almost boundless range of references, symbols, and allusions. They will help many others to tour the darkling plain that is Finnegans Wake.

732 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001

About the author

Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.

For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton...

Reviews

[James Murphy]

This might be an essential read for anyone who seriously delves into James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake. Thornton Wilder, of course, is the celebrated novelist. He was a devotee of Joyce's novel and once advised that those who read it should do so every day. (Reading these letters I think Wilder didn't practice the discipline he advised.) Adaline Glasheen was a Joyce scholar and author of the acclaimed study A Census of Finnegans Wake, which went through three ever-larger editions. The correspondence between Wilder and Glasheen began in 1950 and continued until his death in 1975. Valuable information, broad discussions of the novel as well as close line-by-line examinations and learned insight into the depths of the difficult novel passed between them during the 25 years of their friendship. Each subject, item, or reference discussed is carefully noted by page and line so that the eager reader can add the annotations to his copy of the novel, if he has the energy for hundreds of them and any marginal space left. These letters are immensely helpful in that way. In addition, there are 14 (count'em, 14!) appendices made up of essays and scholarly papers written by the two of them. As I say, essential information and fascinating reading for those who admire the novel.