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January book of the month

• Message 1.听

  Posted by Herb Robert (U14072548) on Monday, 21st January 2013

  I'll try again - with no quotations this time, but you'll have to recognise, as I'm sure you will, that not all the words in this post are my own.
  
  Anyway, welcome to the book club, where this month we are reading The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. For a look at forthcoming titles, the general thread can be found at: .
  
  This book was first published in 1927 and established Wilder as a major twentieth century novelist. The edition I am reading is the Penguin Classics version of 2000, which is 124 pages long, and any page references will be to this edition.
  
  The first short chapter quickly establishes the theme of the book: Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. (page 9) It is a familiar theme, our desire to understand why some lives appear to be cut short for no apparent reason. The twist here is that Brother Juniper, who is looking at the five lives lost when the bridge collapses, has already made up his mind that these particular lives had reached a natural conclusion, was indeed a perfect whole. Thus he delves into the minutiae of their lives to show that their time had come. As the authorial voice tells us, however, for all his diligence, Brother Juniper never knew the central passion of Dona Maria's life ...鈥� No facts can ever sum up a person.
  
  However, besides pondering this universal question, this book is also a meditation, almost a rhapsody, on love.
  
  While the individual chapters as they evolve are not exactly short stories (there is too much interlinking of characters), yet there is a kind of concision in each part which I associate with the short story. The Marquesa de Montemajor and Pepita chapter is an almost excruciatingly painful description of what the rejected mother will do to gain the never-to-be-achieved love of her only daughter. If the whole purpose of literature (page 17) is the notation of the heart,鈥漷hen Dona Maria has accomplished wholeness. And at the end of this chapter it would be hard to deny that some sort of perfect whole鈥漢as been reached - Let me live now, she whispered. Let me begin again. Pepita herself, the maidservant, tears up her letter in which, in the eyes of Dona Maria, she had experienced the secret of so much felicity. (page 42) Would life after this be any more fulfilling? Yet in the world's eyes (and presumably in the eyes of Brother Juniper) the facts are startlingly other: a mocked and derided ugly old woman who is completely unaware of the way the world views her. Her epiphany at the end of the chapter about life to be lived anew, this time with courage, is a result of two painful loves: her own for her daughter, but also Pepita's for the life she has lost (and the love of the Abbess for Pepita, which is after all what has brought Pepita to this state.)
  
  The complex relationship between the twins Esteban and Manuel is also a tortured and twisted tale of love 鈥� an immense, inexplicable love between themselves, but also Manuel's doomed love for Camila. Though love is inadequate to describe the tacit, almost ashamed oneness of these brothers. (page 48) I find it interesting in this chapter that when Manuel dies, Esteban takes on his brother's name 鈥� there are many shifting identities like this throughout the book (Camila Perichole is really Micaela Villegas (There will be time later to be called Dona Micaela - page 102) , Uncle Pio is a nickname from his time supporting the prostitutes in his native Spain 鈥� it's almost as if the names themselves question the identities of the characters.) Esteban is rescued from death at his own hands only to die shortly afterwards when the bridge collapses 鈥� unlike Dona Maria he had felt his life to be at an end, not at a new beginning in spite of what Captain Alvarado offers him.
  
  Uncle Pio's love for Camila is of a different kind again: Of course I love you, Camila, as I always must, and more than I can say. To have known you is enough for my whole life. (page 102) This love, needless to say, is unreciprocated 鈥� at least not in any conventional way, as she regards that kind of love as entirely a theatrical matter; she had never realized any love save love as passion (page 104), which is among the sharpest expressions of self-interest.鈥� In the end, Uncle Pio cannot let go of Camila, and though she is suffering - A great pain lay at her heart, the pain of a world that was meaningless鈥�(page 109) 鈥� she lets her son Don Jaime go with Uncle Pio for a year's education. Of the five who died at the bridge, we know least about Jaime, though he is there, like all the others, because of the demands of love; he, however, is perhaps more a victim than most.
  
  And so to the final short chapter 鈥� are we now able to establish the notion of a guided world? (p. 111) Clearly Brother Juniper's ludicrous attempts to score people's lives is doomed to fail because in the limited context of the peasants he looks at everyone is indispensable. But this could surely be extrapolated, and perhaps this is what comes when we have all the facts about a life assembled before us but have no guiding principle to organise those facts - The art of biography is more difficult than is generally supposed (page 115). Brother Juniper's generalizations are always with us (page 116), a fact rather sadly brought home in recent weeks by those who have sought to interpret the Sandy Hook massacre as a judgement by God on homosexuality in the States. Or, nearer to home, by those who seem to view unemployment or poverty as moral outcomes of lives lived less well.
  
  In the end, hope blooms out of all of these senseless deaths. The Abbess decides that it was enough that for a while in Peru a disinterested love had flowered and faded.鈥� Camila almost manages to express her love for Uncle Pio but eventually finds rest in the convent garden: the whole tide of Camila's long despair, her lonely obstinate despair since her girlhood found its rest on that dusty friendly lap among Sister Juana's fountains and roses.鈥�(page 121)
  
  The beautiful final page of the book talks of the love that we have for a while, but which disappears as those who hold the memory of it die; But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them.

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  Posted by blimbles (U2522058) on Monday, 21st January 2013

  Thanks once again Herb! This post seems to have passed whatever test your first post failed.
  
  And so to the book. I have just finished it and agree with you that it is a fantastic pondering on love.
  
  I find it interesting that the actress character - "The Perichole" is connected in some way to all of the people who fall from the bridge and that she and the Marquesa's daughter Dona Clara are the two characters who seem least able to accept and to give love. These two people meet in the final pages and for me, this means that the enduring work of true, guilless love - the Abess's orphanage will be able to be continued after her death. (I read this in, it is not written in the book. My interpretation is that Camila will do the hands on work and Dona Clara will provide money.)
  
  The final page is indeed beautiful.
  
  I think that although there is little detailed description of the country, the book still gives a feel for this South American country, particularly the references to the Andes. I would like to trek there before I am too old.
  
  While I think the Brother Juniper's attempts to score the lives taken is a flawed exercise, it does make you wonder about the decisions you take and the consequences...the Captain descends to the river to see about the ship, but Esteban opts to continue across the bridge. Camila relents and lets Uncle Pio take Jaime away. These things come up all the time - people that were late to work in the twin towers on 11 Sep and hence were not involved in the tragedy, the guys that were late to get up to the top of the building last week when the helicopter hit in London, the poor people who just happened to be beneath the helicopter as it fell. Etc etc. Much to think on, and perhaps futile to attempt to make any sense of it. Can't help but feel a bit sorry for Brother Juniper though - burnt along with his book for trying some sort of reckoning.
  
  A really good book - thanks for suggesting it.
  
  b

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  Posted by Byeeee (U14697115) on Monday, 21st January 2013

  Firstly hello as this is my first TVH book club meeting.
  
  I really enjoyed this although still musing on the overall meaning, I think it's one to return to periodically, it will definately keep a place on my bookshelves (about half the books I read don't make it to the shelves and end up at the charity shop: this won't be one of them). Amazing to think that Thornton Wilder was in his 20s when he wrote it. One thing I wondered was what had led him to set it in 18th century Lima, does anyone know?
  
  What I really loved about it was the way he managed to say so much so succinctly, for example: she lived alone and she thought alone - tell you so much about the Marquesa de Montemayor in just seven words. There's not much visual description in it but one bit that stuck out was the paragraph about the archbishop that starts: there was something in Lima that was wrapped up in yards of violet satin... - lovely, I could just see him. And then in another paragraph he sums up what makes him tick.
  
  Anyway I am in the middle of cooking so i shan't say more but just wanted to echo the thanks for suggesting it.

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  Posted by Bette (U2222559) on Tuesday, 22nd January 2013

  Well, I started off reading this book with 'great expectations' - partly because I have always enjoyed the books that Herb has introduced, and also on learning that Thornton Wilder had written the screen-play for 'Shadow of a doubt' which is amongst my favourites of Hitchcock films.
  
  The beginning of the book also captured my attention, the unrequited love that the Marquesa has for her daughter (makes me want to read up on the presumed model for this: Mme de S茅vign茅). However, as I read on, my interest slowly waned. I found it interesting enough to finish it (short as it is!) but it gave me nothing, emotionally, and I wasn't that impressed with the style of writing, tbh. I don't know if that is because of the opening premise by Brother Juniper of assuming there was a 'plan' behind these deaths. As I have no religious convictions myself, I couldn't identify with this at all, and found his delving into these five lives rather ridiculous (I note that he was burned alongside his huge tome).
  
  Overall, I am glad to have read something by and about Wilder, who was just a 'name' to me beforehand, but I don't think I'll be keeping this on my bookshelf.
  
  By coincidence, there was a 7-page article in the New Yorker on 7th January 'Man of Letters: The case of Thornton Wilder'. It was interesting to read more about his life, but he comes across as really not a terribly pleasant person. Unfortunately, I can only link to the pr茅cis of the article:
  
  

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  Posted by blimbles (U2522058) on Thursday, 24th January 2013

  Firstly hello as this is my first TVH book club meeting.
  
  I really enjoyed this although still musing on the overall meaning, I think it's one to return to periodically, it will definately keep a place on my bookshelves (about half the books I read don't make it to the shelves and end up at the charity shop: this won't be one of them). Amazing to think that Thornton Wilder was in his 20s when he wrote it. One thing I wondered was what had led him to set it in 18th century Lima, does anyone know?
  
  What I really loved about it was the way he managed to say so much so succinctly, for example: she lived alone and she thought alone - tell you so much about the Marquesa de Montemayor in just seven words. There's not much visual description in it but one bit that stuck out was the paragraph about the archbishop that starts: there was something in Lima that was wrapped up in yards of violet satin... - lovely, I could just see him. And then in another paragraph he sums up what makes him tick.
  
  Anyway I am in the middle of cooking so i shan't say more but just wanted to echo the thanks for suggesting it.听 Thanks for you thoughts, Ruby, and welcome. I hadn't realised that Thornton Wilder was so young when he wrote the book.
  
  I agree about the spareness of the writing, it gives it a kind of directness I think. I too liked the description of the archbishop.
  
  I'm glad you found us here, please feel free to suggest a book for future months if you wish
  
  b

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  Posted by blimbles (U2522058) on Thursday, 24th January 2013

  Well, I started off reading this book with 'great expectations' - partly because I have always enjoyed the books that Herb has introduced, and also on learning that Thornton Wilder had written the screen-play for 'Shadow of a doubt' which is amongst my favourites of Hitchcock films.
  
  The beginning of the book also captured my attention, the unrequited love that the Marquesa has for her daughter (makes me want to read up on the presumed model for this: Mme de S茅vign茅). However, as I read on, my interest slowly waned. I found it interesting enough to finish it (short as it is!) but it gave me nothing, emotionally, and I wasn't that impressed with the style of writing, tbh. I don't know if that is because of the opening premise by Brother Juniper of assuming there was a 'plan' behind these deaths. As I have no religious convictions myself, I couldn't identify with this at all, and found his delving into these five lives rather ridiculous (I note that he was burned alongside his huge tome).
  
  Overall, I am glad to have read something by and about Wilder, who was just a 'name' to me beforehand, but I don't think I'll be keeping this on my bookshelf.
  
  By coincidence, there was a 7-page article in the New Yorker on 7th January 'Man of Letters: The case of Thornton Wilder'. It was interesting to read more about his life, but he comes across as really not a terribly pleasant person. Unfortunately, I can only link to the pr茅cis of the article:
  
  听 Hi Bette. Well you were ahead of me in that you had heard of Thornton Wilder before this book being recommended! I had no idea he had done a Hitchcock screenplay either.
  
  Interesting that you were captured by the beginning of the book - the Marquesa - this was the best bit from my POV, I think there is something rather noble and captivating about the way she doggedly pursues the love of her daughter and won't have a word said against her.
  
  I also liked the twins chapter - I think the relationship between twins is a good source for a writer and I felt sorry for Esteban for the loss of Manuel.
  
  Always interesting to hear why books aren't enjoyed too. We all take different things from them and react differently I think.
  
  b

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  Posted by Byeeee (U14697115) on Thursday, 24th January 2013

  Finally made it back to the thread.
  
  Bette, interesting what you said about thinking you might have had problems with it because you have no religious convictions. I am also an atheist, and found it rather confirmed my view that things are all ultimately pretty meaningless and random, and all we have is the life that we experience, and if we are lucky, the chance to love and be loved while we are alive, and people who care enough to remember us after we die. I felt the last paragraph pretty much seemed to sum that up. On the other hand I wonder if someone religious might interpret it completely differently? It is rather ambiguous - one of the things I liked about it.
  
  

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  Posted by Campbell in Farewell Clogs (U14226916) on Friday, 25th January 2013

  I've just rediscovered my copy of the book. It was under a pile of wooly hats on the hall table, but of course, where else would it be...?
  Will be back later.

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