The Bridge of San Luis Rey

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The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Penguin Modern Classics Cover
Author Thornton Wilder
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Penguin
Publication date 1927
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 138
ISBN NA

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is American author Thornton Wilder's second novel first published in 1927 to worldwide acclaim. It tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope-fiber suspension bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the bridge.[1]. A friar who has witnessed the tragic accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die.

Philosophically, Thornton Wilder said that he was posing a question: "Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual's own will?"[2] Describing the sources of his novel, Wilder explained that the plot was inspired "in its external action by a one-act play by [the French playwright] Prosper Merimee, which takes place in Latin America and one of whose characters is a courtesan. However, the central idea of the work, the justification for a number of human lives that comes up as a result of the sudden collapse of a bridge, stems from friendly arguments with my father, a strict Calvinist. Strict Puritans imagine God all too easily as a petty schoolmaster who minutely weights guilt against merit, and they overlook God's Caritas' which is more all-encompassing and powerful. God's love has to transcend his just retribution. But in my novel I have left this question unanswered. As I said earlier, we can only pose the question' correctly and clearly, and have faith one will ask the question in the right way."[2] When asked if his characters were historical or imagined, Wilder replied, "The Perichole and the Viceroy are real people, under the names they had in history. Most of the events were invented by me, including the fall of the bridge."[2] He based the Marquesa's habit of writing letters to her daughter on his knowledge of the great French letter-writer, Madame de Sevigne.[2]

The story makes use of two historical characters, Manuel de Amat y Juniet, who was Viceroy of Peru at the time and his lover, a street singer known as La Perichole, who, in real life, was named Micaela Villegas.

It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, and in 1998 it was selected by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best 20th-Century novels. The book was quoted by Tony Blair during the memorial service for victims of the September 11 attacks in 2001. The book was cited during the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse by Brian Williams of NBC News as well as Charlie Gibson of ABC News.

This book was cited by John Hersey as a direct inspiration for his nonfiction work Hiroshima (1946).

Contents

[edit] Film adaptations

Three films have been based on the novel:

[edit] Popular culture

It is quoted on the cover of British Sea Power's album, The Decline Of British Sea Power. David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas echoes it in many ways, most explicitly through the character Luisa Rey.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ John Noble Wilford. "How the Inca Leapt Canyons", The New York Times, 2007-05-08. Retrieved on 2007-05-09. 
  2. ^ a b c d "The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)", Thornton Wilder Society.
Awards
Preceded by
Early Autumn
by Louis Bromfield		 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
1928		 Succeeded by
Scarlet Sister Mary
by Julia Peterkin