<p>Its time for a classic! We havent ventured into that territory since reading The Moonstone together in 2010, so our April CC Book Club selection is The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. For those of you who might have been scared off by last months 850 page tome 11/22/63, please be aware that The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a very manageable 160 pages. </p>
<p>Interesting selection. Thanks, Mary 13! I read the book as a high-schooler and haven’t looked at it since. It will be interesting to re-read it from my current perspective.</p>
<p>It’s March 1st and discussion is one month away, so I thought I’d bump this up for those who missed it the first time around. There is still plenty of time to read our April selection, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Please join us!</p>
<p>I picked up a copy from the library: hardcover reissue 2004, foreword by Russell Banks.</p>
<p>It looks good and discounting the foreword and afterword runs less than 100 pages. I plan to start it closer to April 1 … if I can wait. My library also has the DVD. The cast looks good … reviews less so.</p>
<p>^ Hurray! Glad you’ll be joining us. I haven’t started it yet, but plan to do so this week. (I just finished Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian. Depressing.)</p>
<p>Haven’t started “The Bridge” yet, but I did get it from Amazon. Mary13, I read “Skeletons” a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it in spite of the depressing factor.</p>
<p>I finished but am rereading bits and pieces.</p>
<p>Prompt Mary starts discussions on the first of the month but tolerates those of us who occasionally slide into the discussion a day or two (uh … occasionally a week or two :o) late. I find this to be one of the charms of the CC Book Club.</p>
<p>I have only read two works by Thornton Wilder, Our Town and The Bridge of San Luis Rey. I loved the former, but wasn’t crazy about the latter. In both works, I saw Wilder as a pessimist. </p>
<p>In The Bridge, as hard as Brother Juniper tries to find a reason/meaning for the five deaths, the search leads only to his being condemned as a heretic and burned alive. If that’s not pessimism, I don’t know what is. And none of the five victims has a “pretty” story – all have had an inordinate share of suffering in their lives. Yet despite their sad stories, Wilder’s way of writing about these characters did not move me. Wilder himself admits that he strove for a “removed tone,” a “faintly ironic distance from the impassioned actions” (p. 113). To me, that’s a style born of pessimism, not optimism.</p>
<p>I just found a second set of discussion questions (many of which I think are superior to those on the first list). </p>
<p>So now you have plenty of food for thought. Talk on!:</p>
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[quote] Discussion Questions II:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Was Brother Juniper’s quest to prove God’s plan noble or foolish? Was the collapse of the bridge an accident, or was there intention? What is the narrator’s conclusion?</p></li>
<li><p>How does the framing of the novel—a story examining an event 200 years prior—affect your reading? What does the passage of time add to our understanding of the characters? Why might Wilder choose not to tell the story from Brother Juniper’s point of view?</p></li>
<li><p>Wilder had not been to Peru when he wrote The Bridge. How does his choice of detail and language heighten the sense of atmosphere and the believability of the characters?</p></li>
<li><p>Why might Wilder have written The Bridge as a novel rather than a play? What aspects of the story are more appropriate to fiction than to drama?</p></li>
<li><p>In what ways is The Bridge of San Luis Rey a fable? Does it teach a lesson? If so, what are we supposed to learn from the book?</p></li>
<li><p>Does The Bridge have a hero? A villain? If so, what characteristics define these roles? Which characters were “good” and which were “bad” by Brother Juniper’s standards?</p></li>
<li><p>Wilder’s Lima is populated by orphans, brothers, uncles, mothers, and matrons. How do these relationships conform to or deviate from your idea of family?</p></li>
<li><p>Why does Do</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think it’s odd that people would consider Wilder an optimist. However, I am not sure I see him as a pessimist either.</p>
<p>He allowed all of the characters who died (except maybe Pepita) to experience a touch of hope or possible redemption right before their end. Even poor Pepita had sort of a moment of intimacy with the Marquesa after the Marquesa read her letter.</p>
<p>To me, there is a certain sentimentalism in the story that I think some people confuse with optimism.</p>
<p>I’ll admit I wasn’t crazy about the book either (especially the Pio and Camila story – they were just so…strange) but it had a certain melancholy resonance and lyricism that I won’t soon forget.</p>
<p>I really didn’t like this book. I’m hoping you will all help me discover what I missed.</p>
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I can see the optimism here as well, but then he kills them off. Not a very optimistic ending for people who just discovered a reason to live and find happiness. </p>
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<p>I thought the story had a theme of how awful it is to live without love. All of the people who died were missing love in one way or another and they were all very sad characters. </p>
<p>From page 107, the last sentence of the story:
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<p>It seems the people who died are remembered with love only after their death. Living your life without love is meaningless. Oh, I don’t know…I’m confused by this book…</p>
<p>BuandBC82, I’m with you. After I read the “Afterword,” I felt guilty that I didn’t like this book more. I wondered if I was a literary lightweight or just a product of the century in which I was born. The Afterword suggests that the book is timeless:</p>
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<p>Still, I wonder…If The Bridge of San Luis Rey were published today, do you think it would receive the same accolades, or have our collective literary tastes changed in modern times?</p>
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<p>I absolutely agree, but I would add that there is a companion theme of how awful it is to live WITH love. Many of the characters experience the greatest suffering because of the actions (or inaction) of those they love. The Marquesa is hurt again and again by her greatest love, her daughter; Uncle Pio is pushed away by Camila, whom he adores; Estaban is barely functional after he loses Manuel, and so on. There may be much love in these relationships, but little joy.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s about self-interested love vs a more selfless type of love. </p>
<p>On page 90 of my edition, it says that Camila had never experienced anything but passionate love, and that “that love…remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest.”</p>
<p>I think this definition of “passion” can be expanded to mean the kind of possessive, intrusive love that the Marquesa had for her daughter, that Esteban had for Manuel, and that Pio had for Camila.</p>
<p>Right before their deaths, the Marchesa seemed to become relieved of her obsession, Esteban seemed to have a chance for relief under the care of Alvarado, and Pio perhaps had a chance at a sort of redemption through caring for the child.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how Pepita and little Jaime fit into this scheme, though! They seem more like sacrificial lambs.</p>
<p>First, I have to say that while I’ve heard the title of the book in the past, I always assumed it was some kind of war story (probably conflating it with Bridge over the River Kwai). So I was rather surprised to find there was no war :). </p>
<p>Second, the style of the book brought to mind Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio as a set of interconnected short vignettes. </p>
<p>Third, I loved the book except for the end when Brother Juniper met his unfortunate fate.</p>
<p>I’m surprised that none of the discussion questions bring up Wilder’s use of irony, which to me seems central. I will give the other questions some thought this coming week though :). I hope there will be some other posters who liked the book too.</p>
<p>Yes, Wilder wrote in 1926 that “passion is one of the lesser ‘loves’.” (I’ve been spending a lot of time with the Afterword, looking for enlightenment. :))</p>
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<p>Very true, but I’m wondering if this isn’t some sort of “classic” literary resolution. I could list several books where the protagonist’s moment of redemption is followed by sudden death, but I don’t want to create spoilers for people who haven’t read those books. I’ll just mention one, since the CC Book Club read it together: The Elegance of the Hedgehog. As with The Bridge, that was certainly “not a very optimistic ending for people who just discovered a reason to live and find happiness.”</p>