A masterful biography of Thornton Wilder

This biography of Thornton Wilder, whose most famous play Our Town is still played all over the country, is masterful as the author has mostly presented him through his own words, while keeping his very full life in sequence.

Those words – from his letters, journals, manuscripts and other documents show an often troubled man, sometimes conflicted, and a good and faithful friend to many.

He was a scholar, an actor, a teacher, lecturer, playwright, novelist, listener and good family member – once he got past his father’s anxious wish for him to be a teacher. Actually, he was a teacher for years – at Lawrenceville and at the University of Chicago.  He was also offered a position at Yale, which he turned down – much to his father’s chagrin.

His childhood was spent in China, his school years at Lawrenceville and Yale.  Once sprung, he high-tailed it for Rome (actually it took him two weeks on an ocean liner), where he spent an enthralled year, to be followed by many restless future years traveling in Europe.

He got a master’s from Princeton (in old French) and saw plays in New York – 19 of them – having been sent there by Theatre Arts Monthly. But his most cherished offer came from the MacDowell Colony (founded in 1907 by Edward MacDowell, the composer, and his wife), as it offered him the chance to write full-time: “I didn’t know how badly I wanted it until it was mine.”

His father still despaired of him.

He was also writing a novel, and through a chance aquaintanceship, he was able to show it to the new publishing house of Boni and Liveright. The book was called Cabala – loosely connected portraits of people who interacted enough that the book could be called a novel. Future novels had more or less the same outline.

He never married. There was one mysterious love, which no one has any record of.  He was badly hurt and, from then on, had no emotionally close relationships.

From the MacDowell summer on he wrote, grimly at times, for it was sometimes a lonely year when one of his ideas came on him.

In 1933, he was well enough known to start working in Hollywood, where he made many friends (“went rollerskating with Walt Disney ); he met Orson Welles who, discouraged, had given up Hollywood, and immediately contacted Alexander Woolcott, who took Welles under his wing, and the rest is history. In a letter, he writes a wonderful description of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing.

In 1935, however, he went back to teaching at the University of Chicago and there met Gertrude Stein. They took to each other immediately, so much so that later in life he worked with her on one of her books.  She returned to Chicago, this time with Alice Toklas, and they stayed in his apartment (Toklas left him some goodies in the fridge).

Later, in France, Stein took him with her to hear Picasso read poems he had written. He and Stein corresponded until her death.

However, his work at the University was so hectic that he had an “odd little unimportant nervous breakdown.” He had gone back to earn some extra money to help his family out.

In 1945, he became Colonel Wilder, serving as an intelligence officer in the U.S Army Air Force.

There are pictures of him with Ethel Waters and,with Lady Bird Johnson looking on, a picture of him receiving “the first ever National Medal for Literature from the president of the National Book Committee.”

There is also one of him the last time he played the Stage Manager in Our Town, here in the Williamstown Theatre in Williamstown. There is also a picture of him standing next to a convertible he was given by producer Sol Lesser for helping him with the film adaptation of Our Town. That was in 1939.

He also won three Pulitzer Prizes, as well as other honors. None of these are mentioned in the book.

He had become a world renowned figure, friends with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Gerald Murphy; Sigmund Freud asked him to come and visit.

He wrote Scott Fitzgerald a touching letter: “It is wonderful to have been liked by you and to have been told so, for the self-confidence I have exhibited toward my work I have never been able to extend to my person.”

This review could continue with so many more of his activities and honors and views of life his work. He wrote Skin of Our Teeth, for example –  the revision of which turned into Hello Dolly.  

He worked with Gertrude Stein on Geogrphical History of America, admitting that he didn’t understand all of it, nevertheless, worked hard to get it published in the U.S.

Suffice it to say that, as long as this biography is – hard to say how long (it ends on page 711, though its actual length is hard to tell, for page 112 is followed by 177) – I have scarcely noted half of it, it still ended too soon for me.

The humor, the diversity, the humanity of the man writ large keeps the reader all the way. The author’s wry comments now and then convey him whole and make for such an interesting book. I so admire the way the author conveys his complexity through her subject’s own words.

By the way, these famous names (and there are many more) are never introduced for their own sake.  Mostly those figures write to him or he to them – no “dropping of names.”   

Book info:
Thornton Wilder: A Life
By Penelope Niven
Harper, $39.99

Posted by Rae Eastman on February 28, 2013. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Book Reviews,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry