Download or read book Thornton Wilder and His Public written by Amos N. Wilder and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thornton Wilder, three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, remains to many people an enigma. Malcolm Cowley indicated that "in point of intelligent criticism, Wilder is the most neglected author of a brilliant generation," and the Times Literary Supplement once observed that "Thornton Wilder has successfully resisted any kind of classification as a novelist or playwright." In this revealing, incisive study, Amos Wilder, Thornton's older brother, seeks to situate his brother's vision and art. Much criticism, dominated my modernist canons, has not known what to do with Thornton Wilder and finds suspect his wide popularity and what is seen as his traditionalist or "mid-brow" outlook informed by "Puritan" antecedents and rearing. The present essay, however, documents Wilder's full initiation into the "modern" experience, only insisting that he absorbed its iconoclasms into a deeper and more universal humanism. Critical circles, in their view of the American Writer in our day, commonly neglect and disparage those legacies, cultural and religious, which shaped Wilder's outlook. Therefore, the central section of this essay is devoted to biographical detail, illustrating those creative factors and faiths that undergird American society and its promise. Many readers will be aided in their understanding of Wilder by this book's description of the special circumstances of his education, formative influences, and family life. Thornton Wilder and His Public offers rare, intimately informed, and helpful illumination on the life and art of one of America's greatest literary figures.
Download or read book Thornton Wilder written by Penelope Niven and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 791 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Thornton Wilder: A Life brings readers face to face with the extraordinary man who made words come alive around the world, on the stage and on the page." —James Earl Jones, actor "Comprehensive and wisely fashioned….A splendid and long needed work." —Edward Albee, playwright Thornton Wilder—three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, creator of such enduring stage works as Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and beloved novels like Bridge of San Luis Ray and Theophilus North—was much more than a pivotal figure in twentieth century American theater and literature. He was a world-traveler, a student, a teacher, a soldier, an actor, a son, a brother, and a complex, intensely private man who kept his personal life a secret. In Thornton Wilder: A Life, author Penelope Niven pulls back the curtain to present a fascinating, three-dimensional portrait one of America's greatest playwrights, novelists, and literary icons.
Download or read book The Skin of Our Teeth written by Thornton Wilder and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1972 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An Eternal Family narrowly escape one disaster after another, from ancient times to the present. Meet George and Maggie Antrobus (married only 5,000 years); their two children, Gladys and Henry (perfect in every way!); and their maid, Sabina (the ageless vamp) as they overcome ice, flood, and war -- by the skin of their teeth."--Amazon
Download or read book Thornton Wilder and His Public written by Amos Niven Wilder and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thornton Wilder and His Public written by Amos N. Wilder and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thornton Wilder, three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, remains to many people an enigma. Malcolm Cowley indicated that "in point of intelligent criticism, Wilder is the most neglected author of a brilliant generation," and the Times Literary Supplement once observed that "Thornton Wilder has successfully resisted any kind of classification as a novelist or playwright." In this revealing, incisive study, Amos Wilder, Thornton's older brother, seeks to situate his brother's vision and art. Much criticism, dominated my modernist canons, has not known what to do with Thornton Wilder and finds suspect his wide popularity and what is seen as his traditionalist or "mid-brow" outlook informed by "Puritan" antecedents and rearing. The present essay, however, documents Wilder's full initiation into the "modern" experience, only insisting that he absorbed its iconoclasms into a deeper and more universal humanism. Critical circles, in their view of the American Writer in our day, commonly neglect and disparage those legacies, cultural and religious, which shaped Wilder's outlook. Therefore, the central section of this essay is devoted to biographical detail, illustrating those creative factors and faiths that undergird American society and its promise. Many readers will be aided in their understanding of Wilder by this book's description of the special circumstances of his education, formative influences, and family life. Thornton Wilder and His Public offers rare, intimately informed, and helpful illumination on the life and art of one of America's greatest literary figures.
Download or read book The bridge of San Luis Rey written by Thornton Wilder and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-07-10 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The bridge of San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
Download or read book Long Christmas Dinner The written by Thornton Wilder and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1932 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Long Christmas Dinner - nine decades long - showcases the lives of several generations of the Bayard family, and some of their Christmas dinners. Wilder breaks the boundaries of time as we measure it, and invites us to partake of 'one long, happy Christmas dinner' - past, present, and future. As generations appear, have children, wither, and depart, only the audience appreciates what changes and what remains the same. 'Every last twig is wrapped around with ice. You almost never see that, ' young Genevieve marvels, not realizing that her mother made this observation years earlier, or that her daughter-in-law will one day do the same."--
Download or read book Another Day s Begun written by Howard Sherman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A work of startling originality when it debuted in 1938, Thornton Wilder's Our Town evolved to be seen by some as a vintage slice of early 20th Century Americana, rather than being fully appreciated for its complex and eternal themes and its deceptively simple form. This unique and timely book shines a light on the play's continued impact in the 21st century and makes a case for the healing powers of Wilder's text to a world confronting multiple crises. Through extensive interviews with more than 100 artists about their own experience of the play and its impact on them professionally and personally – and including background on the play's early years and its pervasiveness in American culture – Another Day's Begun shows why this particular work remains so important, essential, and beloved. Every production of Our Town has a story to tell beyond Wilder's own. One year after the tragedy of 9/11, Paul Newman, in his final stage appearance, played the Stage Manager in Our Town on Broadway. Director David Cromer's 2008 Chicago interpretation would play in five more cities, ultimately becoming New York's longest-running Our Town ever. In 2013, incarcerated men at Sing Sing Correctional Facility brought Grover's Corners inside a maximum security prison. After the 2017 arena bombing in Manchester UK, the Royal Exchange Theatre chose Our Town as its offering to the stricken community. 80 years after it was written, more than 110 years after its actions take place, Our Town continues to assert itself as an essential play about how we must embrace and appreciate the value of life itself. Another Day's Begun explains how this American classic has the power to inspire, heal and endure in the modern day, onstage and beyond.
Download or read book Heaven s My Destination written by Thornton Wilder and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If John Steinbeck’s mighty Grapes of Wrath is the tragic novel of the Great Depression, then Heaven’s My Destination is its comic masterpiece. —J.D. McClatchy A hilarious tale about goodness in a fallen world, Heaven’s My Destination introduces George Marvin Brush, one of Thornton Wilder's most memorable characters. Brush, a traveling textbook salesman, is a fervent religious convert who is determined to lead a good life. With sad and sometimes hilarious consequences, his travels take him through smoking cars, bawdy houses, banks, and campgrounds from Texas to Illinois—and into the soul of Depression-era America itself. This special edition includes an updated afterword by Wilder’s nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating material about the author and book.
Download or read book Thornton Wilder and the Puritan Narrative Tradition written by Lincoln Konkle and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fresh examination of the works of Thornton Wilder emphasizing continuities in American literature from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries. Sees Wilder as a literary descendant of Edward Taylor who drew from the Puritan worldview and tradition. Includes indepth readings of Shadow of a Doubt, The Trumpet Shall Sound, and others"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Journals of Thornton Wilder 1939 1961 written by Wilder Thornton and published by New Haven : Yale University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sculptor himself is here and and he takes are arm to confess his groping and his abandonments, or to exult in his late-at-night moments of inspiration.
Download or read book The Eighth Day written by Thornton Wilder and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Wilder's] finest and most beautiful novel. . . . Spanning two continents and several generations, it begins as a murder mystery and goes on to tell a story, at once dramatic and philosophical, about the range of human courage, aspirations, steadfastness, weakness, defeat and victory.” — New York Post This beautiful edition of Thornton Wilder’s renowned National Book Award–winning novel features a foreword by John Updike and an afterword by Tappan Wilder, who draws on unique sources as Wilder’s unpublished letters, handwritten annotations, and other illuminating documentary material. At once a murder mystery and a philosophical tale, The Eighth Day is a “suspenseful and deeply moving” (New York Times) work of classic stature that has been hailed as a great American epic. Set in a mining town in southern Illinois, the novels centers around two families blasted apart when the patriarch of one family, John Ashley, is accused of murdering his best friend. Ashley's miraculous jailbreak on the eve of his execution and his subsequent flight to South America trigger a powerful story tracing the fates of all those whose lives are forever changed by the tragedy: Ashley himself, his wife and children, and the wife and children of the victim.
Download or read book Thornton Wilder written by Penelope Niven and published by Harper. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art is confession; art is the secret told. . . . But art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and hide it at the same time. And the secret is nothing more than the whole drama of the inner life. —Thornton Wilder Thornton Wilder: A Life, the first biography of the playwright and novelist since 1983, is also the first to be based on thousands of pages of letters, journals, manuscripts, and other documentary evidence of Wilder's life, work, and times. For more than a decade, biographer Penelope Niven has worked with unprecedented access to Wilder's papers, including his family's private journals and records, searching for the secrets that illuminate Wilder's public life and work, as well as the hidden inner self sometimes concealed and sometimes revealed in his art and in his papers. Thornton Wilder was a multifaceted man: a teacher, novelist, playwright, lecturer, actor, musician, soldier, man of letters, outspoken citizen, and international public figure. He was also an enigmatic, intensely private man. He belonged to a close-knit, complicated family—two brilliant parents, four gifted siblings, and the specter of his twin brother lost at birth. His biography is also a compelling family saga, starring Thornton Wilder, with strong supporting roles played by his father, mother, brother, and sisters. He was a gypsy, wandering the world, writing, he said, for and about everybody—a fact international audiences still embrace. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, The Eighth Day, and his other novels are still read in the United States and abroad. His plays, especially the iconic Our Town and the revolutionary Skin of Our Teeth, are still performed on stages around the globe. Yet despite the international fame and visibility of Wilder the writer, far too little has been known or understood about Wilder the man—until now. Comprehensively researched and richly detailed, Thornton Wilder: A Life brings the private man center stage and sheds new light on his published and unpublished work.
Download or read book Almost Maine written by John Cariani and published by Dramatists Play Service Inc. This book was released on 2007 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: On a cold, clear, moonless night in the middle of winter, all is not quite what it seems in the remote, mythical town of Almost, Maine. As the northern lights hover in the star-filled sky above, Almost's residents find themselves falling in and
Download or read book Thornton Wilder in Collaboration written by Jackson R. Bryer and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume evolved from papers presented at the Second International Thornton Wilder Conference, held at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, in June 2015. They examine Wilder’s work as both playwright and novelist, focusing upon how he drew on the collaborative mode of creativity required in the theatre, when writing both drama and fiction. The book’s authors use the term “collaboration” in its broadest sense, at times in response to Wilder’s critics who faulted him for “borrowing” from other, earlier, literary works rather than recognizing these “borrowings” as central to the artistic process of collaboration. In exploring Wilder’s collaborative efforts of different kinds, the essays not only consider how Wilder worked with and revised earlier literary texts and the ideas central to those texts, but also analyze how Wilder worked with and inspired other creative individuals and how recent productions of Wilder’s plays, both in the US and abroad, have been the products of unique forms of collaboration.
Download or read book This Is Chance written by Jon Mooallem and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by disaster—and the extraordinary woman who helped pull it back together “A powerful, heart-wrenching book, as much art as it is journalism.”—The Wall Street Journal “A beautifully wrought and profoundly joyful story of compassion and perseverance.”—BuzzFeed (Best Books of the Year) In the spring of 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis—the largest, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before sundown on Good Friday, the community was jolted by the most powerful earthquake in American history, a catastrophic 9.2 on the Richter Scale. For four and a half minutes, the ground lurched and rolled. Streets cracked open and swallowed buildings whole. And once the shaking stopped, night fell and Anchorage went dark. The city was in disarray and sealed off from the outside world. Slowly, people switched on their transistor radios and heard a familiar woman’s voice explaining what had just happened and what to do next. Genie Chance was a part-time radio reporter and working mother who would play an unlikely role in the wake of the disaster, helping to put her fractured community back together. Her tireless broadcasts over the next three days would transform her into a legendary figure in Alaska and bring her fame worldwide—but only briefly. That Easter weekend in Anchorage, Genie and a cast of endearingly eccentric characters—from a mountaineering psychologist to the local community theater group staging Our Town—were thrown into a jumbled world they could not recognize. Together, they would make a home in it again. Drawing on thousands of pages of unpublished documents, interviews with survivors, and original broadcast recordings, This Is Chance! is the hopeful, gorgeously told story of a single catastrophic weekend and proof of our collective strength in a turbulent world. There are moments when reality instantly changes—when the life we assume is stable gets upended by pure chance. This Is Chance! is an electrifying and lavishly empathetic portrayal of one community rising above the randomness, a real-life fable of human connection withstanding chaos.
Download or read book Theaters of the Everyday written by Jacob Gallagher-Ross and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-15 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage reveals a vital but little-recognized current in American theatrical history: the dramatic representation of the quotidian and mundane. Jacob Gallagher-Ross shows how twentieth-century American theater became a space for negotiating the demands of innovative form and democratic availability. Offering both fresh reappraisals of canonical figures and movements and new examinations of theatrical innovators, Theaters of the Everyday reveals surprising affinities between artists often considered poles apart, such as John Cage and Lee Strasberg, and Thornton Wilder and the New York experimentalist Nature Theater of Oklahoma. Gallagher-Ross persuasively shows how these creators eschew conventional definitions of dramatic action and focus attention on smaller but no less profound dramas of perception, consciousness, and day-to-day life. Gallagher-Ross traces some of the intellectual roots of the theater of the everyday to American transcendentalism, with its pragmatic process philosophy as well as its sense of ordinary experience as the wellspring of aesthetic awareness.
