The Bridge

 

This is an image of the very copy I owned way back when!

After over half a century of setting out to read it, I finally read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.

I bought a copy of the book way back in either junior high (September 1967-June 1970) or my earliest years in high school, when I spent my babysitting funds on Scholastic Books. I found the above image on Google; that is the Scholastic Books edition and it cost a whopping 45¢ (those were the days).

My copy set on my bookshelf in my bedroom at home until I graduated from high school. I carried it to Chicago, back to Delaware, back to Chicago, out to Portland, back to Delaware, out to California, and back to Delaware. Once I landed back here for good in 1990, I had it at my various addresses until I finally disposed of it, most likely in one of great sell-offs to Half Price books. 

[Note: I just did a quick scan of my now modest collection just to make sure I no longer had my copy. I did not see it, but I did see, to my great delight, my copy of The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, the 1970 play by J. Lawrence and R. Lee, and yanked it from the shelf to add to my reading pile.]

Don't get me wrong. I tried numerous times, starting from the day I brought The Bridge of San Luis Rey home, to read it. How many times did I read the opening line—"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers in the gulf below"—over the years? Numerous. And how many times did I read more than a sentence or two beyond that? 

Maybe once or twice. Okay, maybe three times.

So what brought me back to The Bridge of San Luis Rey at this late date? Ramona, who is wrapping up her elementary years and even at her young age feels the call of the footlights, brought me back. She will be beginning a 7-year program this fall at the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics (part of the public school district there), and I know at some point she will hear of, read, see, or act in (or all of those things) Our Town, Thornton Wilder's great gift to the world. In anticipation of that day, I purchased a copy for her, and sent a note ahead to her explaining the gift.

While doing so, I poked around on YouTube and found a superb documentary on Wilder from 2022: Thornton Wilder It's Time. (Go watch it.) It is an overview of the author, the man, his works, and his lasting impact. What was said in that video about The Bridge of San Luis Rey made such an impression on me that I ordered it from our library that same day.

I picked it up Friday. I read it through yesterday, got to the end, and started crying. 

How powerful is this book, nearing its 100th birthday? This morning I told Warren I know now what I want on my grave marker. I want the last sentence of The Bridge of San Luis Rey: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

The bridge is love.