*****The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975), American playwright and novelist

·        First published in 1927

·        1928 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction

·        Setting:  Lima Peru, 1714

·        Themes: love and fate

·        The Bridge as symbol:

·        transition: from life into death

·        love: its endurance and the fact that it outlives death.

  

This novella is more complex than it initially appears. It is not simply about a bridge collapsing and the tragic death of five individuals. It looks at the importance of love in our lives, how it outlives us, and how it effects those left behind. It is not that people are merely saddened by another’s loss, but that mortality provides us with new and expanded perspectives. In other words, we may begin to see things we failed to notice during a person’s lifetime. A relationship once wickedly spurned can awaken to deeply repressed or unacknowledged feelings. It is a continuum of emotions previously undiscovered. Wilder also looks at religious theory as it relates to fate and coincidence in our lives. Are our lives governed by God’s pre-ordained plan (fate), or by accident – random occurrences?  Wilder’s inspiration for this question is found in the Gospel According to Luke, when it states: “Or those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem?” Such is the question man has struggled with since the beginning of time and Wilder considers in this profound novel dealing with humankind.

Quotes from, The Bridge of San Luis

p. 7   Franciscan Brother Juniper:

·        “Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.”

·        “But this collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey was a sheer Act of God. It afforded a perfect laboratory. Here at last one could surprise [sic] His intentions in a pure state.”

p. 8 “But to our Franciscan there was no element of doubt in the experiment. He knew the answer. He merely wanted to prove it, historically, mathematically, to his converts, - poor obstinate converts, so slow to believe that their pains were inserted into their lives for their own good. People were always asking for good sound proofs; doubt springs eternal in the human breast…”

p.16  Most readers miss the fact that, “the purport of literature, is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.”

p. 17  “She saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.”

p. 45   “Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.”

p. 81   “…he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely-read could be said to know that they were unhappy.”

p. 99   “Everyone knows that in the world we do nothing but feed our wills.”

p. 107   “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; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Thornton Wilder

Quotes from Wilder clearly define his literary intent and his theory of human nature, which are one and the same thing. They are integral to and enhance the reading of “The Bridge”, which is why I have included them here.

The quotes below are copied from sections of Wilder’s lectures, interviews, and letters as are printed in the 1996 First Perennial Classics edition of, The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

p. 121   In a letter to a former student about The Bridge of San Luis, Wilder quotes his literary influence, Chekhov, “The business of literature is not to answer questions, but to state them fairly.’ I claim that human affection contains a strange unanalyzable consolation and that is all.”

p. 124  Wilder developed his characters from his own literary influences, “My weakness is that I am too bookish, I know little of life. I made the characters of The Bridge out of the heroes of books”. For example, the Letters of Mme. De Sevigne influenced the character, Marquesa de Montemayor (Dona Maria).  p. 116  After attending a concert in Paris featuring Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Wilder said he, “came home and wrote the death of Manuel.”

p. 125   Wilder states that human beings conceal their unhappiness. “In my own case, what I seek everywhere is the mask under which human beings conceal their unhappiness…In social life… in varying degrees. They are solitary, they are consumed with desires which they dare not satisfy; and they wouldn’t be happy if they did satisfy them, because they are too civilized. No, a modern man cannot be happy; he is a conflict, whether he likes it or not.”

p. 125 “Humour is a mask to hide unhappiness, and especially to hide the deep cynicism which life calls forth in all men. We’re trying to bluff God. It is called polish.”

p.129   “Art is confession; art is the secret told. Art itself is a letter written to an ideal mind, to a dreamed-of audience.”

p. 137   “A letter can function as a literary exercise, the profile of a personality, and news of the soul.”

As a side note, and in context to his work, I think it is interesting that Thornton Wilder was friends with Sigmund Freud.

***The Painted Girls, by Cathy Marie Buchanan

Cathy Marie Buchanan (Canadian Author)
Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)
Julia Whelan (Narrator)
Danny Campbell (Narrator)

Contemporary Historical Fiction, 2013
2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Digital Audiobook

The author presents an interesting theory regarding Degas' aesthetic intentions - phrenology. Yet, I believe  his work speaks for itself. Thus rendering Buchanan's premise highly implausible, however interesting.

***1/2 Why I killed My Best Friend by Amanda Michalopoulou

• Translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich
• Published 2009 by Open Letter at the University of Rochester

A multidimensional coming-of-age story set in Greece as its base, Africa for its beginning and Paris as its part-time playground. This dramatic tale is filled with love, loss,  and intense rivalry.

****There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

• Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, born in Moscow 1938, where she still lives, is a Russian writer, novelist and playwright.
• Translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers and was published in 2009
• A fascinating women, Petrushevskaya is also a singer and a visual artist. She has exhibited her work in major Russian museums. 
• Petrushevskaya's work was once banned from publication in Russia 
• Style: Urban Folk-Tale; allegorical 

Petrushevskaya was formerly banned from publishing books in Russia. Many of her stories were not translated into English until recently. Her short stories depict mostly Russian women in dark, melancholic despairing situations during post-war Russia.

Petrushevskaya writes in allegoric form. Her stories read like urban folk tales. She uses surreal, mystical and fantastical imagery to convey the transformative experiences of her characters. Like a dream, the world around them metamorphoses from one moment to the next. The characters wander in nekyia- night journeys where they separate from their physical bodies and float through mysterious tunnels, doors and apocalyptic worlds.  The woman, often on the brink of death or in some other catastrophic situation within their daily lives, are able to see and understand their circumstances differently and return to life with a renewed perspective. It is a form of redemption and, sometimes, healing.

I was mesmerized by Petrushevskaya’s tales. Together, they portray the extreme impoverished conditions of post-war Russia; the soul of its people crushed by oppression, starvation and valueless money. Petrushevskaya’s otherworldly style reveals the indomitable spirit of a people forced to live in squalid and often inhumane situations. Similar to Chekhov, this is story telling at its finest.

*****Agostino by Albert Moravia

Albert Moravia,  1907-1990
Translated from the Italian by Michael Moore
Originally written in 1942, but was rejected for publication by Fascist censors.

Setting:  Tuscany Italy

Theme: adolescence - coming of age, sexual awakening

*****A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe: 1660-1731

• A Journal of the Plague Year was first published in England, 1722 and is a fictionalized account of the Great Plague of London, 1665-1666. 
• The actual plague began around the time DeFoe was five years old and is not his first hand account, but a representation of what it was like to live during the plague.
• To prepare for writing this novel, Defoe, who had worked as a journalist among other things, gathered notes from those who had experienced the plague first-hand, from medical and mortality records and he it is believed he may have obtained information from his Uncle's diary, who is also believed to be H.F., the narrator.
• Defoe is one of the first authors to come from a common ancestry, being without a University and/or classic's background. He is believed -by many- to be the first English novelist. What ever the opinion, he significantly contributed to the development of the English novel.

Setting:  London, England 1664 -1666

Themes

• suffering
• authority - the ability to govern and maintain order during a plague, or any tragedy

• experiences and emotions during a tragedy
• compassion for the destitute or helpless
• belief's as to how the plague started, how it spread, etc.
• religion

Characters

• H.F. -  the narrator, a bachelor and saddler, who is not identified until the last page of the novel when he closes his account of the Great Plague, yet uses his initials, only. Devoutly religious.
• H.F's Brother - H.F. takes care of his brother's house. His brother fled from London, with his family, at the plagues outbreak. 
• Dr. Heath - H.F.'s friend and physician who gives him medical guidance throughout the plague.
• John Hayward - A neighbor of H.F.'s brother who escapes the plague with his wife, despite the fact he is a parish undersexton, a gravedigger, and he buries the sick dead. His wife is a nurse who works with the sick. They believe their use of garlic, vinegar and other natural remedies is the reason for their continued health.
• Robert & Rachel: Husband and wife, they are forced to live apart so healthy Robert can support his plague afflicted wife and baby.  Robert lives on his boat. He leaves goods outside of, and far from, their house, then calls Rachel to announce his delivery and walks away so she can access all.

• The Piper - A poor man who receives food and/or (mostly) alcohol for playing his pipe at bars during the plague. After passing out on the street, he is picked up for dead and wakes up in a mass burial pit (grave) among the actual dead.
• Solomon Eagle - A Quaker who preaches God's final judgment up and down the streets of London, naked, with a pan of burning coal on top of his head.
• John, Thomas & Richard - A trio of healthy men who, despite all odds, are able to escape London and the plague well after it is locked down and they are blocked from entering all surrounding towns.
• Ford- Is the leader of a group of healthy people on the run from London and the plague. They meet and join John's trio, again, surviving on the outskirts of all towns despite the odds.
• John Cock - When the plague first breaks out, John takes his household - a wife, five children, a maid and two apprentices - to live in the country. He learns that the plague is abating, but is far from over. Over zealous to be home in London, they all return. Within five days, all but the maid are dead from the plague. John and his family are symbols.  Defoe uses their story as a cautionary tale.

Vocabulary
deodand:  An animal or article that caused, or was related to, a persons death. By law, it must be forfeited to the crown to be used for charitable purposes. This law was abolished in England in 1846.

Quotes

 "...as they say in the case of a mad dog, who though the gentlest creature before of any of his kind, yet then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him, and those as soon as any who had been most observed by him before."

"...the corruption of human nature, who cannot bare to see itself more miserable than others of its own species, and has a kind of involuntary wish that all men were as unhappy or in as bad a condition as itself."

"...tis evident that death will reconcile us all..."

"...many people had the plague in their very blood, and preying upon their spirits, and were in themselves but walking putrefied carcases whose breath was infectious and their sweat poison, and yet were as well to look on as other people, and even knew it not themselves; I say that it was really true in fact, but they know not how to propose a discovery."

"I  mean as such the begging, starving, laboring poor, and among them chiefly those who, in a case of siege, are called the useless mouths..."

"But nobody can account for the possession of fear when it take hold of the mind."

***A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy,  1939-2012, an Irish novelist
Audiobook,  2013, read by Rosalyn Landor