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Lifting Every Roof: A Profile of Thornton Wilder
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19121 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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4 / 2000 |
2,396 Words |
| Author
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Linda Simon
Linda Simon is professor of literature at Skidmore College
and a frequent contributor to The World & I. |
There were many more works and prizes to come. By the time he died in 1975, Wilder had published seven novels and three collections of plays. Another collection of plays, selected essays, and his journals were published posthumously. A look at just a few of these works reveals the capacious breadth of Wilder's interests and talents: The Woman of Andros (1930), a lyrical meditation on morality and goodness; Heaven's My Destination (1934,) a quirky tour through Depression-ridden America; The Ides of March (1948), with its portrait of a troubled and passionate Julius Caesar; and a satirical romp, The Matchmaker, which later became the bouncy musical Hello, Dolly!
Far from being a traditionalist, in his plays especially, Wilder was a stylistic maverick and experimentalist who aimed to revolutionize the theatrical experience for his viewers. Like Pirandello and Brecht, with whom he sometimes is compared, he believed that theater had the potential to make viewers newly aware of their own perceptions of reality. He saw himself as a popularizer of difficult philosophical ideas and drew upon a wide range of sources--from Terence to Shakespeare to Proust--in his own works. Intellectuals, he believed, did not have a corner on anguish or despair. "Lift every roof," one of his characters remarks in The Woman of Andros, "and you will find seven puzzled hearts."
Thornton Niven Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, on April 17, 1897, the second child of Amos Parker Wilder and his wife, Isabella. Within a few years, two daughters were born: Charlotte in 1898, Isabel in 1900; a third daughter, Janet, was born in 1910. When Thornton was eight, his father, a newspaper editor with political ambitions that included a foreign diplomatic post, applied to serve
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