What keeps us from reading certain books? Here is Thornton Wilder, writer of Our Town, and Pulitzer Prize winner for his second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and I find myself facing a book that I should have read by now. Even now, looking through Wilder’s accomplishments, I am moved to read his first novel, The Cabala, just to know why it is not as famous, not a Pulitzer winner. What kind of force field repels my interest?
Enough. The book is in my hands; I have time, motivation, and hope. Hope that the reading will be as wonderfully lucid as Edmund Fuller promises.
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it is on your plate – that’s my philosophy.
- Thornton Wilder, from The Skin of Our Teeth, 1942
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After reading part two I reread part one, mostly because I became engrossed in Dona Maria’s life and lost track of some context. I am still reading this paragraph and, of all things, a dictionary entry for surprise. The narrator doesn’t seem to agree with Brother Juniper on this enterprise but seems content to let him be the impetus for the telling of the life stories we will encounter.
Speaking of the narrator, I enjoyed the bit towards the end of the first part where the narrator pauses to say hello.
You have identified threads that I want to pull on as well, to test the strength of the fabric. But right now I want to suggest that we are seeing here another instance of the phenomenon we discussed at length with respect to the movie Babel (and other similar (re)presentations of stories). We are presented not only with a frame narrative, of sorts—though I do not know how “closed” that frame is, we are also presented with separate, stand-alone, yet interconnected narratives which—at least for the narrator, and for Brother Juniper many years before—have more to that interconnection than is readily discernable on the surface of things. One of the common story elements that keeps surfacing is the ability to write, particulary letters. Another is “love” in its various forms.
I am presently in the midst of Uncle Pio’s story; I have not ventured to re-read any bits yet. I want to get a sense of the whole before going back and looking at structure and symbolism and that sort of thing in any great detail. Like you—though I have not followed through—I wanted to look at the definition of surprise. I have access on-line to the OED. I will provide a synopsis of what I find there, once I go looking.
Consider the following from The Bridge of San Luis Rey:
. . . in relation now to:
This last is not unlike Vonnegut’s Church of God the Utterly Indifferent (first mentioned in Sirens of Titan, I believe), an idea I have always found appealing but for the assumption of the existence of some God.
One of the websites (Wikipedia?) that I looked at briefly regarding our current reading exercise mentioned that the book “dealt with the problem of evil,” which it went on to describe as concerned with bad things happening to good people. I suspect that that gloss is a gross simplification not only of the problem of evil but also of the book. And my feelings about its relation to the problem of evil are grounded in my prior readings concerning the Manichaean Heresy (which, more than likely, was the legal ground cited by the Inquisition for the “purification” of Fra Juniper; “no-one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”).
I have just finished re-reading the opening of the book. And I am intrigued by several questions. First, who is our narrator? And, correspondingly: When and Where is our narrator? We certainly have some clues as to his/her/its temporal relation to the story: ” . . . for in that country those catastrophes which lawyers shockingly call the ‘acts of God’ . . .” (4); ” . . . which as we shall see later, was publicly burned . . .” (8); “But there was a secret copy and after a great many years . . .” (8); “And I, who claim to know so much more . . .” (9). And then there is the paragraph opening the last part of the book: “A new bridge of stone has been built in the place of the old . . .” (133).
What we clearly have, without being specific—and the text lacks sufficient information for such specificity, is a narrator at some significant remove from the events of the story, yet who claims some special insight as to the lives of the individuals of whom Fra Juniper made such a microscopic study. But for the occasional self reference, one might almost suggest the narrator is omniscient. But then there is the reference to the fact that some of those interviewed by Fra Juniper deliberately misled him, suggesting that all storytellers are working with flawed material. I won’t use the “R” word, but you know what I am getting at . . .
Continuing with my questions: What sort of hubris does it require to enter into an experiment in which there is “no element of doubt,” one in which “[h]e knew the answer,” one “[h]e merely wanted to prove” (9)?
Looking ahead to other notions which intrigue me: who are the vignettes really about? Notice there are characters who consistently cross the diegetic boundaries, were we to consider each little narrative by itself, most notably the Nun and the Actress.
Perhaps this is what makes a classic: beneath the primary story line are subtle threads of interesting themes that cannot be dismissed. The region of the San Luis Bridge is confined but I found the low degrees of separation interesting. In addition to the nun and the actress is Captain Alvarado. These characters are much more than story glue.
As you re-read the first chapter, take note of the ending. Through the vignettes we get a robust sense of the lives of the people who died on the bridge. There was love in the lives of these characters that is not diminished by time or the receding memory of that love.
Thinking of the narrator in this novel I cannot help but be reminded of the stage manager in Our Town. This is probably unfair but the seemingly simple plot with complex characters is reminiscent of a play.
And thinking of Father Juniper I cannot help but think he was the author’s whipping boy. We need Father Juniper; his presence is the vehicle of the story itself. The book is in some way a manifestation of his research into God’s purpose as exemplified by the death of these characters on a bridge in Peru. Somewhat ironic, isn’t it, that the church condemns to death the person who is trying to prove God’s purpose in an apparent accident?
I have been reading The Maltese Falcon these last few days. I am very nearly finished. I started reading it because of a question my friend Tom asked me in his classroom while I was home. He had asked me to come and present a short paper to his class on a Hemingway story, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” If you haven’t read it, you should. It is wonderfully rich. But, that aside, I cannot remember the question Tom asked (and will write him to see if he recalls) but in response to my answer about not having read the book but having seen the film he indicated that the book ends differently. I am waiting to find out how so.
And . . . all of that aside, in reading the book, I came across an embedded narrative which has some bearing on the subject matter of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Consider the following lift from that story which Spade is telling Brigid O’Shaunessey: (the story is about a man who “disappears” only to reappear years later)
I was struck on reading this by the relation to “the problem of evil” that Brother Juniper is sussing out. Is there a “grace of God” that protects—or not—or is all that happens merely chance? Have you had a glimpse at the inner workings of life? I think I have had on several occasions . . . and “grace” has little to do with it.
Recently, a message was posted to the Society for the Study of Narrative Literatures (SSNL) listserv, asking for examples of narratives in which the narrator questions the storytelling ability of others in the process of establishing his/her own narrative competence. Many interesting examples were provided, some of them texts with which I was familiar; most were wholly new to me.
But I got to thinking about the opening of Wilder’s little book and the way in which the narrator questions Brother Juniper’s accuracy in telling the stories of those who died when the bridge failed. The narrator states explicitly that Brother Juniper “never knew” and by implication was unable to tell anyone’s story accurately; (s)he on the other hand claimed “to know so much more,” despite questioning his/her ability to have gotten to the truth in the event. Based on the responses to the request, this is a fairly common approach to establishing narratorial credibility and competence as a storyteller.
Thoughts?
Brother Juniper is presented as a man with a hammer who understands everything in life resembles a nail and is now certain he has found an incident that proves it. Certainly we are given this evidence that the narrator knows so much more than Brother Juniper, but we are also informed that our narrator has possibly missed the very spring within the spring. What has been established is a relative level of competence.
I prefer a humble narrator and Brother Juniper needs no help in looking misguided, but the narrator’s confession seems like nothing more than a telling of the task’s difficulty. Brother Juniper collected historical data on the victims and compiled them into a great book. Our narrator, who knows so much more, will tell us the story of their loves, relationships, and tragedies. After the narrator is finished, do we understand the characters any better than if we had read Brother Juniper’s account?