Thornton Wilder | |
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 Wilder in 1948 | |
| Born | Thornton Niven Wilder (1897-04-17)April 17, 1897 Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | December 7, 1975(1975-12-07) (aged 78) Hamden, Connecticut, U.S. |
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| Education | Oberlin College Yale University (BA) Princeton University (MA) |
| Notable works |
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| Relatives | Thornton M. Niven,Amos Niven Wilder,Isabel Wilder,Charlotte Wilder,Janet Wilder Dakin |
Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won threePulitzer Prizes, for the novelThe Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the playsOur Town andThe Skin of Our Teeth, and a U.S.National Book Award for the novelThe Eighth Day.
Wilder was born inMadison, Wisconsin, the son ofAmos Parker Wilder, a newspaper editor[1] and later a U.S. diplomat, and Isabella Thornton Niven.[2]
Wilder had four siblings as well as a twin who was stillborn.[3] All of the surviving Wilder children spent part of their childhood in China when their father was stationed inHong Kong andShanghai as U.S. Consul General. Thornton's older brother,Amos Niven Wilder, became Hollis Professor of Divinity at theHarvard Divinity School. He was a noted poet[citation needed] and was instrumental in developing the field oftheopoetics. Their sisterIsabel Wilder was an accomplished writer. They had two more sisters,Charlotte Wilder, a poet, andJanet Wilder Dakin, a zoologist.[4]
Wilder began writing plays while at theThacher School inOjai, California, where he did not fit in and was teased by classmates as overlyintellectual. According to a classmate, "We left him alone, just left him alone. And he would retire at the library, his hideaway, learning to distance himself from humiliation and indifference."[This quote needs a citation] His family lived for a time in China, where his sister Janet was born in 1910. He attended the EnglishChina Inland MissionChefoo School atYantai, but returned with his mother and siblings to California in 1912 because of the unstable political conditions in China at the time.[5] Thornton graduated fromBerkeley High School in 1915.[6]
Wilder served a three-month enlistment in theU.S. Army'sCoast Artillery Corps atFort Adams inRhode Island duringWorld War I, eventually rising to the rank ofcorporal. He attendedOberlin College before earning hisBachelor of Arts degree in 1920 atYale University, where he refined his writing skills as a member of theAlpha Delta Phi fraternity, a literary society. He earned hisMaster of Arts degree in French literature fromPrinceton University in 1926.[7]
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After graduating, Wilder went to Italy and studiedarchaeology and Italian (1920–21) as part of an eight-month residency atThe American Academy in Rome, and then taught French at theLawrenceville School inLawrenceville, New Jersey, beginning in 1921.[8] His first novel,The Cabala, was published in 1926. In 1927,The Bridge of San Luis Rey brought him commercial success and his firstPulitzer Prize (1928).[9] He resigned from the Lawrenceville School in 1928. From 1930 to 1937, he taught at theUniversity of Chicago, during which time he published his translation ofAndré Obey's own adaptation of the tale "Le Viol de Lucrece" (1931) under the title "Lucrece" (Longmans Green, 1933).[10] In Chicago, he became famous as a lecturer and was chronicled on the celebrity pages.[11] In 1938, he won thePulitzer Prize for Drama for his playOur Town, and he won the prize again in 1943 for his playThe Skin of Our Teeth.[12]
World War II saw Wilder rise to the rank oflieutenant colonel in theU.S. Army Air Force Intelligence, first in Africa, then in Italy until 1945. He received several awards for his military service.[fn 1] He went on to be a visiting professor atHarvard University, where he served for a year as theCharles Eliot Norton professor. Though he considered himself a teacher first and a writer second, he continued to write all his life, receiving thePeace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1957 and thePresidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. In 1968 he won theNational Book Award for his novelThe Eighth Day.[13][14]
Proficient in four languages,[8] Wilder translated plays byAndré Obey andJean-Paul Sartre. He wrote thelibretti of two operas,The Long Christmas Dinner, composed byPaul Hindemith, andThe Alcestiad, composed byLouise Talma and based on his own play.Alfred Hitchcock, whom he admired, asked him to write the screenplay of his thrillerShadow of a Doubt,[15] and he completed a first draft for the film.[8]
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) tells the story of several unrelated people who happen to be on a bridge inPeru when it collapses, killing them. Philosophically, the book explores the question of why unfortunate events occur to people who seem "innocent" or "undeserving". It won the Pulitzer Prize[1] in 1928, and in 1998 it was selected by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century. The book was quoted byBritish Prime MinisterTony Blair during the memorial service for victims of theSeptember 11 attacks in 2001.[16] Since then its popularity has grown enormously.[citation needed] The book is the progenitor of the modern disaster epic in literature andfilm-making, where a single disaster intertwines the victims, whose lives are then explored by means of flashbacks to events before the disaster.[citation needed]
Wilder wroteOur Town, a popular play (and later film) set in fictional Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. It was inspired in part byDante'sPurgatorio[17][18] and in part by his friendGertrude Stein's novelThe Making of Americans.[19] Wilder suffered fromwriter's block while writing the final act.Our Town employs a choric narrator called theStage Manager and aminimalist set to underscore the human experience. Wilder himself played the Stage Manager on Broadway for two weeks and later insummer stock productions. Following the daily lives of the Gibbs and Webb families, as well as the other inhabitants of Grover's Corners, the play illustrates the importance of the universality of the simple, yet meaningful lives of all people in the world in order to demonstrate the value of appreciating life. The play won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize.[20]
In 1938,Max Reinhardt directed a Broadway production ofThe Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder had adapted fromAustrian playwrightJohann Nestroy'sEinen Jux will er sich machen (1842). It was a failure, closing after 39 performances.[21]
His playThe Skin of Our Teeth opened in New York on November 18, 1942, featuringFredric March andTallulah Bankhead. Again, the themes are familiar – the timeless human condition; history as progressive, cyclical, or entropic; literature, philosophy, and religion as the touchstones of civilization. Three acts dramatize the travails of the Antrobus family, allegorizing thealternate history of mankind. It was claimed by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, authors ofA Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, that much of the play was the result of unacknowledged[dubious –discuss] borrowing fromJames Joyce's last work.[fn 2][22]
In his novelThe Ides of March (1948), Wilder reconstructed the characters and events leading to, and culminating in, the assassination ofJulius Caesar. He had metJean-Paul Sartre on a U.S. lecture tour after the war, and was under the influence ofexistentialism, although rejecting itsatheist implications.[23]
In 1954,Tyrone Guthrie encouraged Wilder to reworkThe Merchant of Yonkers intoThe Matchmaker. This time the play opened in 1955 and enjoyed a healthy Broadway run of 486 performances withRuth Gordon in the title role, winning aTony Award for Guthrie, its director. It became the basis for the hit 1964 musicalHello, Dolly!, with a book byMichael Stewart and score byJerry Herman.[24]
In 1960, Wilder was awarded the first everEdward MacDowell Medal byThe MacDowell Colony for outstanding contributions to American culture.[25]
In 1962 and 1963, Wilder lived for 20 months in the small town ofDouglas, Arizona, apart from family and friends. There he started his longest novel,The Eighth Day, which went on to win theNational Book Award.[14] According to Harold Augenbraum in 2009, it "attack[ed] the big questions head on, ... [embedded] in the story of small-town America".[26]
His last novel,Theophilus North, was published in 1973, and made into the filmMr. North in 1988.[27]
The Library of America republished all of Wilder's plays in 2007, together with some of his writings on the theater and the screenplay ofShadow of a Doubt.[28] In 2009, a second volume was released, containing his first five novels, six early stories, and four essays on fiction.[29] Finally, the third and final volume in the Library of America series on Wilder was released in 2011, containing his last two novelsThe Eighth Day andTheophilus North, as well as four autobiographical sketches.[30]
Six years after Wilder's death,Samuel Steward wrote in his autobiography that he had sexual relations with him.[31] In 1937,Gertrude Stein had given Steward, then a college professor, a letter of introduction to Wilder. According to Steward,Alice B. Toklas told him that Wilder liked him and that Wilder had reported he was having trouble starting the third act ofOur Town until he and Steward walked around Zürich all night in the rain and the next day wrote the whole act, opening with a crowd in a rainy cemetery.[32]Penelope Niven disputes Steward's claim of a relationship with Wilder and, based on Wilder's correspondence, says Wilder worked on the third act ofOur Town over the course of several months and completed it several months before he first met Steward.[33]Robert Gottlieb, reviewing Penelope Niven's work inThe New Yorker in 2013, claimed Wilder had become infatuated with a man, not identified by Gottlieb, and Wilder's feelings were not reciprocated. Gottlieb asserted that "Niven ties herself in knots in her discussion of Wilder's confusing sexuality" and that "His interest in women was unshakably nonsexual." He takes Steward's view that Wilder was a latent homosexual but never comfortable with sex.[34]
Wilder had a wide circle of friends, including writersErnest Hemingway,F. Scott Fitzgerald,Zelda Fitzgerald, Toklas,Jean-Paul Sartre, and Stein; actressRuth Gordon; fighterGene Tunney; and socialiteSibyl, Lady Colefax.[1]
From the earnings ofThe Bridge of San Luis Rey, in 1930 Wilder had a house built for his family inHamden, Connecticut, designed byAlice Trythall Washburn, one of the few female architects working at the time. His sister Isabel lived there for the rest of her life. This became his home base, although he traveled extensively and lived away for significant periods.
Wilder died ofheart failure in hisHamden, Connecticut, house on December 7, 1975,[8] at age 78. He is interred at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hamden.[35]
A witness to the deaths, wanting to make sense of them and explain the ways of God to his fellow human beings, examined the lives of the people who died, and these words were said by someone who knew the victims, and who had been through the many emotions, and the many stages, of bereavement and loss.
"But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left 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.
Retrieved on May 18, 2009| Non-profit organization positions | ||
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| Preceded by | Wartime International Presidential Committee 1941–47PEN International 1941–1947 | Succeeded by |
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