The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel
by Thornton Wilder
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Book Reviews of The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel
Book Review: All you need is love
Summary: 3 Stars
Ever since man conceptualized the idea of a god, he has been wondering why this god has acted in a certain way, often times in a way that was detrimental to the lives of the god's most ardent believers. Trying to explain why man has to suffer needlessly because of the capriciousness of a deity has been the pursuit of eons of poets, philosophers and theologians - an effort that usually results in either platitudes or the literal and/or figurative throwing up of hands. Perhaps A.E. Housman might have had a clearer vision when he remarked that "Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man." That Thornton Wilder's consideration of this age old question could have been published right in the middle of the debauched 1920s might seen a bit odd, but the overwhelmingly positive reception that The Bridge of San Luis Rey enjoyed (as well as winning the Pulitizer Prize for 1927) clearly shows that the question is truly a timeless one.
Given the complexity of the question being considered, Wilder's book is audaciously simple: a short parable that interweaves case histories of the five individuals killed, when the bridge of San Luis Rey fails, with the flawed ruminations of Brother Juniper's scholastic attempt to prove theology an exact science. By setting his novel in 17th century Peru, Wilder gives his story both an exotic background and a historical context, a decision that allows him to create a unique setting, almost medieval in atmosphere, in which the powers of state and church (through the Inquisition) hold complete sway over his characters. Wilder is as careful with his prose as he is with his setting. The three case studies are written as simple parables in a style that is reserved and graceful; these are in contrast to the generally ironic tone of the commentary.
Although Brother Juniper tackles his study with the zeal of a PhD sociology student he is not to be trusted: he thinks he sees "in the same accident, the wicked visited by destruction and the good called early to Heaven," hardly an earth shattering conclusion. But what the good Brother lacks in scholarly traits, he does make up for it by his descriptions of the three case studies of the Marquesa de Montmayor; the twin, Esteban; and the self styled sophisticate, Uncle Pio. What each of these characters have in common is that all are endowed with the admirable gift of love, although it is the form of love that proves to be their downfall. The Marquesa has an oppressive love for her daughter; Esteban is tormented by the death of his beloved twin, Manuel; and Uncle Pio confuses love for beautiful women and language with a dictatorial control of his ward, the beautiful Camila Perichole. In each case the love that they exhibit is selfish and controlling, not the loving generosity that is required to love humanity truly. It is the Abbess Madre Maria del Pilar who sums up Wilder's thesis - "love is the only survial, the only meaning."
Despite the artistic strenghts of the novel and the seriousness of the subject, I just could not get into the book, no matter how hard I tried. Perhaps it was Wilder's use of parable to tell his story or perhaps it was the palpable sense of detachment that pervades the novel (the reader gets the feeling that he is looking at a painting rather than reading a novel) that bothered me. Regardless, I finished the novel without much of the positve feelings that many other readers experienced.
Book Review: A very forgettable "classic"
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm always excited to read another book on Time's top 100 list because I never know what to expect or what is going to happen. I am almost halfway through the list and I have read novels I consider masterpieces, great, good, fair, disliked and downright hated.
So, just because someone says it is a masterpiece does not mean you have to think it is. I take this approach each and everytime when reading a classic. After all, it is only their opinion versus mine. I am no Yale graduate, but I have read hundreds of novels and would like to think of myself as a well read individual, qualified to give a valid opinion. Try as I might, despite the intriguing story line, Pulitzer prize, and rave reviews, The Bridge of San Luis Rey was a huge disappointment for me.
One reason, to be honest, is that I am not huge fan of most stream of conscious novels because I don't they just don't captivate or enthrall or produce sufficient enough emotions inside of me for them to be interesting or memorable. Faulkner is the only author I would consider amazing at the stream of conscious style. I get restless with the jumbled words and fragmented story (mostly lack thereof) because this style of a novel isn't about stories it is about a person's thoughts and sometimes a person's inner thinking is just not that riveting as is the case here.
I love great description, moving and fleshed out characters, power, intrigue and solid story lines. This novel has none of those qualities. Perhaps I should be more open and celebrate stories I don't and can't get immersed in but I want to remember a novel to consider it great no matter how fancy and flowery the language might be. The story is about a bridge that collapses in Peru without warning sending five random people to their deaths. It is an accident of corrosion and nature and not of anything done by man. It all happens by pure coincidence. A man from a distant witness this event and becomes obsessed with the lives of those who died in order to determine whether or not they died by chance or divine intervention.
Sounds interesting I know. I thought the idea seemed fascinating but it is not. There are chapters dedicated to three of the five characters and a preachy afterwards that spins itself around in circles. It is slightly confusing but that isn't the issue here. My favorite novel, The Sound and the Fury is very confusing and rewarding but this novel is only the former. I found it hard to focus and in the end I felt I knew very little about the people who died and I certainly didn't care about them. And shouldn't I have with such a searching plot line?
There were no solid arguments for chance or divine intervention. Just a lot of words and a lot of needless fluff. For me, to consider a novel a masterpiece I at least need to remember it when I am done reading and with this last sentence The Bridge of the San Luis Rey has already faded away from my mind which is busily anticipating the next novel up on the top 100 list which has a better chance than not then being better than this one is.
Grade: C-
Book Review: A classic revisited...
Summary: 4 Stars
Thornton Wilder is perhaps best known for his play, "Our Town," which is the staple of high school drama groups and this book, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. I first read the book in high school, now more than 40 years ago and sadly chose it for its length - a short assignment! Some of the negative reviews of the book seem to be from these young, first time readers - I would have been among them on my first reading. Almost certainly you need some maturity (read: life experiences) to fully appreciate Wilder's wonderful, dense, evocative prose.
The year was 1714, the "Sun King," Louis XIV was still on the throne in France, and Peru was an established colony of Spain, when the bridge collapsed. One of the sub-themes of the book is the relationship of the colony with the mother country, Spain, and Peru's efforts to mature, in terms of the cultural and social life available. The central strength of the novel is Wilder's incisive portraits of four individuals: the physically ugly, lonely noveaux-riche, the Marquesa de Montemayor; Estaban, the sole survivor of twin orphans; and Uncle Pio, the wheeler-dealer who "trained" the actress Perichole. The first three fell to their deaths when the bridge collapsed, along with two others, Pepita, the assistant of the Marquesa, and Jaime, the son of Perichole. These two are not characterized in detail, and thus might be considered so much "collateral damage."
Examples of Wilder's succinct and meaningful prose are, in terms of the Archbishop: "A curious and eager soul was imprisoned in all this lard, but by dint of never refusing himself a pheasant or a goose or his daily procession of Roman wines, he was his own bitter jailer." Has schadenfreude ever been better defined that the reaction of the population to the knowledge that the glamorous actress Perichole had become disfigured by smallpox: "...henceforth any attention paid to her must spring from a pity full of condescension and faintly perfumed with satisfaction at so complete a reversal."?
The overall framework of the novel is the search for meaning in this accident, faithfully pursued by a Brother Juniper who investigated each of the characters and their connections with their relations and friends. For his efforts, the Catholic Church burned him at the stake for "heresy" since his conclusion was that it was "God's will" that they were chosen to be called "home." Wilder's own conclusion is equally unsatisfying: "There is a land of the living, and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
It was humbling to realize that Wilder wrote this book, with its intense character sketches when he was still under 30. The weakness, despite the Pulitzer, was the overall framework and his facile, trite conclusions as to meaning, in a universe devoid of same, despite our best efforts. Overall, a much better book to read in one's 60's than when one is 16.
Book Review: Brilliantly beautiful
Summary: 4 Stars
Thornton Wilder's 1927 masterpiece is a contemplative and delicately mournful work, brilliant in the simple power of its prose. Battling with God, fate, or destiny- particularly the God of the Catholic faith - is a facet that has preoccupied many authors, including Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, and Wilder brings his own unique vision to that individual struggle, viewing it with a mixture of bitterness and faith. He approaches it through the lens of a very human but very haunting question: Why did those people - those people in particular - die? So often throughout the novel it seems that someone else should have died - the close friend or relative or mentor of one of those who fell to their deaths, rather than one of the actual victims. Each of them - a brilliantly intellectual but half-mad matriarch, an intelligent, lonely orphan with a future, a sailor with nothing left to live for, and a old, multi-talented man with the crippled son of a great actress in tow - has reached some sort of turning point in their lives, and is going to make a new beginning. Why then should they die? The book does not provide an answer - not in that way. Rather, Wilder's answer to death, and perhaps in a way to the sacrifices exacted by death or God or whatever he considers the dominant force - is love. "Love...the only meaning."
The characters are brilliantly drawn and sketched, particularly The Marquesa de Montemayor, a woman risen from peasant stock to become a noblewoman, but whose life is wasted in hungry, desperate longings for a daughter who despises her. From this hunger springs a series of brilliantly witty and profound letters which will be the wonder of every generation after her, while in between the writing of them the Marquesa plunges into drunkenness with the regularity of clockwork. Uncle Pio, similarly, a man born with a knack for life and success and the even rarer knack of loving beauty and talent without hungering for the woman who possesses them, is a character who burns with originality and pathos. These two, along with Esteban, the twin who is inwardly dead, are the three around whom the book is centered, with the other two, the young Pepita and Jaime, acting as supplements to them; the more obscure pair among the quartet of victims. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a hauntingly beautiful exploration into the meaning of life and of death, full of tenderness and subtle ironies, and reminiscent of both Brideshead Revisited and The Bridges of Madison County in its gentle pathos. Not a book to be missed.
Book Review: Such Gentle Wisdom
Summary: 5 Stars
A classic novella, written with exemplary simplicity and grace. An Inca footbridge suspended over a canyon in Peru collapses in 1714, killing five people who were crossing at the time: an elderly Marquesa, her sweetly unassuming orphan maid, a young man of many skills mourning the recent death of his twin brother, an aging Svengali with his fingers in every pie, and the illegitimate son of the Viceroy. A contemporary monk investigates their lives in an attempt to discern the hand of God in the event, whether as a punishment for wrongdoing or an early welcome into heaven. Following in his footsteps, Wilder emphasizes rather the interconnectedness of their lives and their effect on those they leave behind: the Marquesa's daughter (recipient of her beautiful letters), the famous actress Perichole, the Viceroy, a swashbuckling sea captain, and the self-sacrificing Abbess of the convent in Lima. His conclusion: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize for this brief novel in 1928; it is still worth reading today, for its gentle wisdom, which is timeless, and for its style, which combines classic balance with Midwestern common sense. Here he is at his more formal, describing the Marquesa's letters: "The Conde delighted in her letters, but he thought that when he had enjoyed the style he had extracted all their richness and intention, missing (as most readers do) the whole purport of literature, which is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world." And here he is speaking the thoughts of the youngest of the five people killed in the accident, the Viceroy's little boy: "Uncle Pio had just overtaken a friend of his, a sea-captain. And just as they got to the bridge he spoke to an old lady who was traveling with a little girl. Uncle Pio said that when they had crossed the bridge they would sit down and rest, but it turned out not to be necessary."
Although most of the novel is imaginary, the Perichole and the Viceroy are real people, given their real names. But in fact they lived a half-century later than when Wilder places them. And their son survived, to become one of the signers of the Peruvian Declaration of Independence in 1821.