The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels

Library of America #194

by Thornton Wilder, J.D. McClatchy (Editor)

Library of America #194
Thornton Wilder was the rare writer whose achievements as a playwright were matched by equal abilities as a novelist. As companion to its volume of Wilder?s collected plays, The Library of America?s edition of his early novels and stories brings together five novels that highlight his wit, erudition, innovative formal structures, and philosophical wisdom. Drawing on the post-collegiate year he spent in Rome, Wilder fashioned in The Cabala a tale of youthful enchantment with the Eternal City in the form of a fictitious memoir of an American student and the enigmatic coterie of noble Romans who draw him into their midst. He followed this debut novel two years later with The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which catapulted him to literary prominence and earned him the first of his three Pulitzer prizes. ?The Bridge,? Wilder later wrote, ?asked the question whether the intention that lies behind love was sufficient to justify the desperation of living.? Set in 18th-century Peru, the book is a kind of theological detective story concerning a friar?s investigations into the lives of five individuals before they were killed in a bridge collapse. An elegantly told parable, with credible historical ambience and psychologically rounded characters, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is primarily a probing inquiry into the nature of destiny and divine intention: Why did God allow these particular people to die?

The Woman of Andros, based on the Andria of Roman writer Terence, is a meditation on the ancient world filtered through the sensibility of a meditative courtesan; Heaven?s My Destination, a departure from Wilder?s historical themes, is a picaresque romp through Depression-era America; and The Ides of March takes up the story of Julius Caesar?s assassination by imagining the exchange of letters among such prominent ancient figures as Catullus, Cleopatra, Cicero, and Caesar himself, ?groping in the open seas of his unlimited power for the first principles which should guide him.? The volume concludes with a selection of early short stories?among them ?Précautions Inutiles,? published here for the first time?and a selection of essays that offers Wilder?s insights into the works of Stein and Joyce, as well as a lecture on letter writers that bears on both The Bridge of San Luis Rey and The Ides of March.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, American, Novels, Collections, 20th Century

731 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

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

[Realini Ionescu]

The Bridge of San Luis Rey has won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitze... becoming the bestselling novel in 1928 and it is included on Time Magazine’s All-TIME 100 Novels list https://entertainment.time.com/2005/1... and the 100 Best Novels of the Modern Library list https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100...

10 out of 10





The under signed had read this acclaimed novel exactly ten years before taking it up again, the second time in the form of a sort of audiobook, read by some amateur on YouTube – in itself, an interesting, rather amusing, if at times somewhat annoying experience…first of all, gratitude is due to the apparently young woman who has taken up the task of volunteering and helping others get access to this opus magnum, then let us say that she is often overwhelmed and at one time, she says she does not know Spanish and oh, you just go ahead and get the book to read it for yourself [we could take up her model and say later, if we get annoyed with this note…what the hell, if you do not like it, just take some professional advice]…then you hear trains, a cat, the phone, and when the latter is ringing, the paragraph is interrupted and then there are quite a few words she clearly has not read from the page, she just made up, with the caveat that she warns you and it is a choice to make, read or listen to this



The premise of the novel is challenging and enticing, for the collapse of The Bridge of San Luis is raising questions we are used with – those who have doubts, for there are fervent evangelicals that are sure Trump is the chosen one, the world was made in exactly the pathetic number of years written in the Bible, which is what, a few thousand years – and the crucial, fundamental one seems to be what is behind the fall to death of five people, who had travelled from Lima, capital of Peru, to Cuzco, for given that God is Almighty, it was his will for the victims to die and Brother Juniper sets out to look for the evidence and prove that it had to be those five people and their demise will testify to the divine intervention…

One of the characters, the first one we are acquainted with is Dona Maria, Marquesa de Montemayor, who has an arranged marriage, resulting in a daughter, Clara, the latter is not elated, exulting in the company of her mother, travels to Spain – a letter would take six months to cross the ocean back then, when alas, they had no email, social networks to keep them busy all day – and the Marquesa finds some solace in the company of Pepita, a girl raised at the convent, but unfortunately, they are both on the Bridge when it collapses…



The third part follows two twins, Esteban and Manuel, raised at the convent, Santa Maria Rosa de las Rosas, just like Pepita, and gaining a living as scribes, and Manuel falls in love with the famous Camila Perischole, the latter using the young man’s services to write letters to her lover, the viceroy – this is proof that there is no hope for him, Manuel confesses to his brother, Esteban is upset with this choice of this sibling – one time, the actress arrives with an emergency and does not see that it is Esteban who has to write to a matador (she is furious for being mistreated and says that a matador will age much more quickly than she will) eventually, Manuel is infected when he has a wound at his leg and the doctor is unable to propose anything better than cold compress and as a result of the small wound, the loving twin dies…



Studies have shown that identical twins (those who share much, if not all the DNA, I am not sure how this works actually) are prone to have well, identical tastes and even when they had been separated by oceans, raised by adoptive parents, it is astonishing to see them at meetings wearing about the same clothes and sharing tastes and much else – they have been used to look at the old question ‘nature versus nurture’ where the answer is in fact both, not one without the other – and they have the ability to experience some powerful emotions, even at a distance from one another, which encourages the Man in the Sky hypothesis, or at least some belief in supernatural, paranormal phenomena…

After Esteban walks on the bridge and dies, we move to part four, dealing with Uncle Pio, a colorful, complex, intriguing, amusing and also horrifying character (he has even worked for the Inquisition…reminding me of the Monty Python joke that you can find on the net, if interested, let us avoid our usual link and say you can google it) who has been around the world, and has the traits necessary for an adventurer – let me see if I remember, the ability to socialize, become friendly with strangers, change appearance Uncle Pio has started rebellions on behalf of the government, worked for Austrians and the French, used to spread rumors, and seems to have been a sort of swindler, except of course, these were times with different standards and the rule of the Game was everything goes apparently, until one would be caught, or gain access to higher echelons…he has birds though (and we have two macaws here, so this trait endears him) he is the one who discovers Camila Perichole and becomes devoted to her.



This is though a tumultuous relationship, perhaps a tad perverse on the side of the ‘uncle’, who is involved in the education of the girl, only twelve when she is discovered – we may be affected by the knowledge of so many scandals involving adults and children, many of them discovered within the Catholic Church – then following the Pygmalion model he transforms the girl into the most famous actress in Peru – psychologists have made an interesting experiment, going to schools and telling teachers that they have a new IQ test, which indicates the children that will have a tremendous increase in their capabilities and in various classrooms, they named a few and told professors not to interfere in the usual program, for they will come later to notice their progress…indeed, the selected pupils will have progressed significantly, when they will have been tested a few months later, but the catch is that they had been chosen for being average (there is no test like the one claimed, the purpose of the test was to see the results of intense belief in the ones named) and their ascension is the result of belief in their skills and talents, which is now proved in tests that looked at students, teachers, managers and this phenomena is called the Pygmalion Effect…Pygmalion is the ancient sculptor who, according to the legend, had created a statue, named Galatea, fell in love with it and then asked the gods to give it life…

One of the main questions in this acclaimed chef d’oeuvre, nay, the paramount one would be what about God, does this prove the connections he makes, the idea that every single feather that drops from my macaws or any other birds has been touched by His hand, or there is nobody up there (or anywhere else) the alternative being that there is Something, an entity, love as God, which is in everyone and everywhere "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

[Valentina Vekovishcheva]

Everyone needs to read some Wilder once in a while❤

[Adam Carrico]

I’ve already logged the novels, but wanted to specifically shout out the literary criticism. Next to The Ides of March, the essays were the best part of the collection. I’ll never tire of smart people analyzing Joyce’s writing.

[Charles Walker]

Five stars for Heaven's My Destination and The Ides of March, no question about it. It's interesting, because The Bridge..., having won the Pulitzer, garners most of the attention, but retrospectively, it seems tentative and preliminary compared to Wilder's later work. Wilder was pretty consistent in his obsessions - mysticism, classical history and a sort of dark, existential terror mashed up through 15 different kinds of formal experimentation. The supreme irony is that he is by and large remembered as some icon of Norman Rockwell Americana (all those lame, syrup-drenched high school renderings of Our Town). But in the works included here, much like in a close read of that play itself, we find virtually nothing sentimental in Wilder's work: in the face of the bleak, dark echo of infinity, the Stage Manager gently reminds us, all our human striving starts to look kind of silly. That work is a masterpiece, because he manages to make that point without the slightest bit of mockery.

This collection is something of a mixed bag. It is impressive to see the leaps and bounds by which Wilder progressed as a writer. The sort of over-serious silliness of The Cabala gives way by the end of the anthology to the brilliant, imaginative, ahead-of-its-time fantasy of The Ides of March. The structural experiments of the latter are deceptively simple but highly influential, presaging a fractured storytelling style you see trickling through television and movie narratives to this day. The novel is a highwater mark in the movement to dispense with the omniscient narrator, to dispense with our pretensions towards a simple, unified theory. Wilder here takes a terrifying moment - Caesar, the very icon of empire, of confidence, of right in the face of wrong, of power and decisive action suddenly doubting everything in the face of his own mortality. "Let me then banish from my mind the childish thought that it is among my duties to find some last answer concerning the nature of life," he says. And he approaches this terrible flash of doubt with a four-part, fragmented narrative, in which each fact is continually reassessed and each moment is repeatedly recontextualized. He would later perfect this in his drama, but this is a fascinating attempt to put these ideas in novel form.

This collection is worth it for Ides alone, but really they are all something of a piece. Heaven's My Destination is a fun read, and is worth taking in just to show Wilder had a lighthearted side as well. Almost like an ultra-Protestant Augie March. Still, a middling review for a collection of varying quality.

[Imlac]

The Bridge of San Luis Rey*****

[Catherine]

I did not read the whole collection, just "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." I'd read it years ago and only remembered that it told the story of five who die when a bridge collapses. The writing was deft and spare, conveying the time and place vividly with very minimal, but well-chosen, description: "...Brother Juniper stopped to wipe his forehead and to gaze upon the screen of snowy peaks in the distance, then into the gorge below him filled with the dark plumage of green trees and green birds and traversed by its ladder of osier." The characters--those who die in the bridge collapse and those who loved them--are strong and strange. All the victims are misfits of one sort or another, their lives distinct and carefully drawn. And despite the fact that the narrative is supposedly based on the research of a Franciscan monk, the book's concluding chapter, "Perhaps an Intention," eschews easy pieties. The concluding paragraph says it all: "But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough....There is a land if the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." This was a worthy read; unexpectedly well-written and moving. I shall certainly read other books in the collection.

[Jon]

Actually all I've read so far in this collection is the Ides of March. I was drawn to it by having just read "Nox" by Anne Carson, a work based on a poem by Catullus. I had not read Catullus since graduate school, so I went back to remind myself about his poetry. The introduction to one of my editions mentioned Thornton Wilder's Ides of March as being one of the best novels about the period. So there I was. It's not really a novel--Wilder calls it a "fantasia." He admits that he's played fast and loose with chronology, pretending that a number of people were around during Julius Caesar's last months who in fact had been dead for years. These include Catullus. The work is made up entirely of letters, memos, histories, notes, poems, allegedly written by the characters themselves. There is no narration. The only entries that are not imaginary are quotes from Catullus' poems. But every entry is fascinating. They strike me as absolutely accurate in feeling and tone, and they present an even more vivid and striking picture of the principals than Robert Harris' recent historical novels about the period. The Library of America volume includes Wilder's other novels The Cabala, and The Woman of Andros--both similarly set in the ancient world. I'm very much looking forward to them.

[Shelby]

This was a collection of five novels and several stories and essays. The first and earliest-published novel, The Cabala was stiff and a struggle to get into, but things improved from there. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder's most well-known novel, is beautifully written and reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I enjoyed two of the others even more: Heaven's My Destination and The Ides of March. Both are written in an entirely different style from Bridge and from each other. You'd never guess these were all written by the same author. Heaven's My Destination is done in the blackest of humors - similar to something written by Nathaneal West.

[Bobbie]

This was an interesting and timeless book. In the book Thornton deals with issues ranging from love, God's providence, failure, families and relationships. Most importantly, the book reminded me of God's encompassing power and all that we don't know about His timing and His plan for each individual's life on this earth. Thornton's Bridge of San Luis Rey is linked to the tragedy of 911 by one reviewer, showing how relevent the book remains although not written in a contemporary setting. I enjoyed the book, although not uplifting, it was thought provoking.

[Katja]

Ten years ago I liked "the bridge" the best but now it feels like the question posed there is just a bit too complex to be answered by a 30 y.o. man in one novel (the question is, roughly, "what is the meaning of life?"). Instead, I find "Heaven is my destination" superb. You can't help but notice that Wilder is a skilled playwright who can create unforgettable, unique characters by the way they speak. "The Cabala" also seems to be a book of characters to me, with the difference that the author does not really know yet what to do with them and just lets them ramble around.

[kate]

when curt columbus suggests you read something, you do it. :)

[Matt]

Didn't grab me. Maybe, I'll reread it sometime.

[Lea]

This book got my attention from an article I read. Anyway, I finally got hold of it and started to read but didn't finish as it wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be.

[Dad Bowers]

good story, good way of treating age old questions of morality and fate!

[Ian]

Read The Cabala & Bridge of St Luis Rey, didn't read more - says what I thought...

[Bob Rehfeld]

I thought our English teacher was punishing the class for making us read this boring book 40 years ago. Time has not changed my opinion of the woefully contrived novel.

[John R]

I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey yesterday. 80 page novella. Fabulous. Would reward close word-by-word and paragraph-by-paragraph study, much like Joyce's long "short" story, "The Dead."

[Christopher Sutch]

Please see my reviews of the individual novels in this collection.

Of the other stories and essays collected in this volume: the early short stories show Wilder as a rather good writer in his early career, though there is really nothing particularly interesting in the stories themselves. The four essays on literature are also of only minor interest. They do show how careful and close a reader he was of difficult modernist texts (in particular, Joyce's two major novels and Gertrude Stein), but students of modernist literature will not find anything earthshattering in his conclusions.