The Bridge of San Luis Rey is American author Thornton Wilder's second novel, first published in 1927 to worldwide acclaim. It tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope-fiber suspension bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the bridge. A friar who has witnessed the tragic accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928.

Plot summary

Part One: Perhaps an Accident

The first few pages of the first chapter of The Bridge of San Luis Rey explain the book's basic premise: this story centers on an event that happened in Lima, Peru, at noon of Friday, July 20, 1714. A bridge woven by the Incas a century earlier collapsed at that particular moment, while five people were crossing it. The collapse was witnessed by Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk who was on his way to cross it. On wanting to show the world of God's Divine Providence. To show that the beginning and end of a person is all part of God's plan for that person. He sets out to interview everyone he can find who knew the five victims. Over the course of six years, he compiles a huge book. Part One foretells the burning of the book that occurs at the end of the novel, but it also says that one copy of Brother Juniper's book survives and is at the library of the University of San Marco, where it sits neglected.

Part Two: the Marquesa de Montemayor

The second section focuses on one of the victims of the collapse: Doña María, the Marquesa de Montemayor. She was the daughter of a cloth merchant, an ugly child who eventually entered into an arranged marriage and bore a daughter, Clara, whom she loved dearly. Clara was indifferent to her mother, though, and married a Spanish man and moved across the ocean. Doña María visits her daughter, but when they cannot get along, she returns to Lima. The only way that they can communicate comfortably is by letter, and Doña María pours her heart into her writing, which becomes so polished that her letters will be read in schools for hundreds of years after her death.

Doña María takes as her companion Pepita, a girl raised at the Convent of Santa María Rosa de la Rosas. When she learns that her daughter in Spain is pregnant, Doña María decides to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa María de Cluxambuqua. Pepita goes along as company and to supervise the staff. When Doña María is out at the shrine, Pepita stays at the inn and writes a letter to her patron, the Abbess, complaining about her misery and loneliness. Doña María sees the letter on the table when she gets back and reads it. Later, she asks Pepita about the letter, and Pepita says she burned it because it was not brave to write it. Doña María has new insight into the ways in which her own life has lacked bravery, but the next morning, returning to Lima, she and Pepita are on the bridge when it collapses.

Part Three: Esteban

Esteban and Manuel are twins who were left at the Convent of SantaMaría Rosa de la Rosas as infants. The Abbess of the convent, Madre María del Pilar, developed a fondness for them as they grew up. When they became older, they decided to be scribes. They are so close that they have developed a secret language that only they understand. Their closeness becomes strained when Manuel falls in love with Camila Perichole.

The Perichole flirts with Manuel and swears him to secrecy when she retains him to write letters to her lover, the Viceroy. Esteban has no idea of their relationship until she turns up at the twins' room one night in a hurry and has Manuel write to a bullfighter with whom she is having an affair. Esteban encourages his brother to follow her, but instead Manuel swears that he will never see her again.

Manuel cuts his knee on a piece of metal and it becomes infected. The surgeon instructs Esteban to put cold compresses on the injury: the compresses are so painful that Manuel curses Esteban, though he later remembers nothing of his curses. Esteban offers to send for the Perichole, but Manuel refuses. Soon after, Manuel dies.

When the Abbess comes to prepare the body, she asks Esteban his name, and he says he is Manuel. Gossip about his ensuing strange behavior spreads all over town. He goes to the theater but runs away before the Perichole can talk to him; the Abbess tries to talk to him, but he runs away, so she sends for Captain Alvarado.

Captain Alvarado goes to see Esteban in Cuzco and hires him to sail with him. Esteban agrees. He wants his pay in advance in order to buy a present for the Abbess. The Captain offers to take him back to Lima to buy the present, and at the ravine, the Captain goes down to a boat that is ferrying some materials across the water. Esteban goes to the bridge and is on it when it collapses.

Part Four: Uncle Pio

Uncle Pio acts as Camila Perichole's valet, and, in addition, "her singing-master, her coiffeur, her masseur, her reader, her errand-boy, her banker; rumor added: her father." The story tells of his background. He has traveled the world engaged in a variety of businesses, most related to the theater or politics, including conducting interrogations for the Inquisition. He came to realize that he had just three interests in the world: independence; the constant presence of beautiful women; and work with the masterpieces of Spanish literature, particularly in the theater.

He becomes rich working for the Viceroy. One day, he discovers a twelve-year-old café singer, Micaela Villegas, and takes her under his protection. Over the course of years, as they travel from country to country, she becomes beautiful and talented. She develops into Camila Perichole, the most honored actress in Lima.

After years of success, Perichole becomes bored with the stage. The Viceroy takes her as his mistress, and she and Uncle Pio and the Archbishop of Peru and, eventually, Captain Alvarado meet frequently at midnight for dinner at the Viceroy's mansion. Through it all, Uncle Pio is faithfully devoted, but as Camila ages and has three children by the Viceroy she focuses on becoming a lady, not an actress. She avoids Uncle Pio, and when he talks to her she tells him to not use her stage name.

When a smallpox epidemic sweeps through Lima, Camila is disfigured by it. She takes her son Jaime to the country. Uncle Pio sees her one night trying hopelessly to cover her pock-marked face with powder: ashamed, she refuses to ever see him again. He begs her to allow him to take her son and teach the boy as he taught her. They leave the next morning. Uncle Pio and Jaime are the fourth and fifth people on the bridge to Lima when it collapses.

Part Five: Perhaps an Intention

Brother Juniper works for six years on his book about the bridge collapse, trying various mathematical formulae to measure spiritual traits, with no results. He compiles his huge book of interviews, but a council pronounces his work heresy, and the book and Brother Juniper are burned in the town square.

The story shifts back in time to the day of a service for those who died in the bridge collapse. The Archbishop, the Viceroy, and Captain Alvarado are at the ceremony. At the Convent of SantaMaría Rosa de la Rosas, the Abbess feels, having lost Pepita and the twin brothers, that her work will die with her. Camila Perichole comes to ask how she can go on, having lost her son and Uncle Pio. Doña Clara comes: throughout the book she has been in Spain, and no one in Lima knows her. As she views the sick and poor being cared for at the convent, she is moved. The novel ends with the Abbess's observation: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

Themes and sources

Philosophically, Thornton Wilder said that he was posing a question: "Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual's own will?" Describing the sources of his novel, Wilder explained that the plot was inspired

"in its external action by a one-act play [Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement] by [the French playwright] Prosper Mérimée, which takes place in Latin America and one of whose characters is a courtesan. However, the central idea of the work, the justification for a number of human lives that comes up as a result of the sudden collapse of a bridge, stems from friendly arguments with my father, a strict Calvinist. Strict Puritans imagine God all too easily as a petty schoolmaster who minutely weights guilt against merit, and they overlook God's 'Caritas' which is more all-encompassing and powerful. God's love has to transcend his just retribution. But in my novel I have left this question unanswered. As I said earlier, we can only pose the question correctly and clearly, and have faith one will ask the question in the right way."

Recognition and influence

In addition to its 1928 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this novel has also been honored in other ways:

In 1998, the book was rated #37 by the editorial board of the American Modern Library on the list of the 100 best 20th-Century novels.

Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

Influences

This book was cited by John Hersey as a direct inspiration for his nonfiction work Hiroshima (1946).

Qui non riposano, a 1945 novel by Indro Montanelli takes inspiration from the novel.

David Mitchell's novel, Cloud Atlas, echoes the story in many ways, most explicitly through the character Luisa Rey.

Ayn Rand references the theme in Atlas Shrugged, her epic of a fictional USA's decline into an impoverished kleptocracy. In the aftermath of a disastrous collision in a railroad tunnel, she highlights train passengers who, in one way or another, promoted the moral climate that made the accident likely.

The book is mentioned in passing by a character in , the third book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

The book is referred to in the Monk television episode, "Mr. Monk and the Earthquake", when Darryl Wright claims to Adrian Monk, Sharona Fleming and Gail Fleming to have written a Pulitzer Prize nominated article about five people who died in a bridge collapse. Monk, however, sees this as a lie.

The story is quoted on the cover of British Sea Power's album, The Decline of British Sea Power.

Inspirational

The book was quoted by Tony Blair during the memorial service for victims of the September 11 attacks in 2001.

The book was cited during the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse by Brian Williams of NBC News as well as Charlie Gibson of ABC News.

Adaptations

Three films have been based on the novel:

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929)

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944)

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2004)

A play for puppets and actors was based on the novel, adapted by Greg Carter and directed by Sheila Daniels: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2006)

See also

List of bridge disasters

Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century

Photos of the first edition of Bridge of San Luis Rey

References

Category:1927 novels Category:American novels Category:Pulitzer Prize for the Novel Category:American novels adapted into films Category:1710s in fiction

Luis V. Rey (b.1955) is a Spanish-Mexican artist and illustrator, a 1977 graduate of the San Carlos Academy, (UNAM). He is best known for his innovative work in the field of dinosaur paleoart, for example in conjunction with Robert T. Bakker, promoting awareness of the developing evidence for feathered dinosaurs. He is an active member of the SVP (Society of Vertebrate Paleontology) and of the Dinosaur Society (UK). He also works in portraiture and makes political pieces, in paint and other media. He lives with his partner Carmen in London, UK.

Dinosaur paleoart

Rey has worked on several museum installations and exhibits, and as consultant for dinosaur modelling in other media such as the BBC television documentary Walking with Dinosaurs. He has worked as a pioneer of the feathered dinosaurs debate since 1988. He has also collaborated with sculptor Charlie McGrady in the construction of a feathered Velociraptor (1997), and many others. Recently he has done several talks and exhibitions for Citta Della Scienza (Naples) in collaboration with Marco Signore and in Mexico City's UNAM with Rene Hernández.

Other collaborations include Random House's bestseller with Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.; the pop-up book Dinosaurs In The Round with Jen Green; and five books with famed paleontologist Robert T. Bakker.

Rey's original 'paleoart' is prized by specialist collectors such as John J. Lanzendorf .

Rey has finally received the 2008 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize for two dimensional art for his piece "Gigantoraptor vs Alectrosaurus".

Book illustration

Rey's dinosaur illustration is found in approximately 40 illustrated dinosaur books for a variety of readerships, from bestselling encyclopedias by Dorling Kindersley to "Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight'' (Martill and Naish 2001, Paleontological Association) ISBN 0-901702-72-2.

Rey's commissioned illustration is also used on the covers of approximately 60 science fiction, fantasy and horror books, notably several editions of the works of Polish sci-fi author Stanisław Lem. For a complete list of published cover art, see the Locus Magazine link below.

Other art

Mexican culture is a strong influence in Rey's private and political art , in terms of vivid color palette, and the use of resonant symbolic objects to communicate specific meanings relevant to the subject. A strand of surrealism - for example, clouds on a blue sky recalling the work of Magritte - may be found interwoven with elements owing more to symbolism or magic realism. For many years he has also been collaborating with famed pottery artists Tiburcio, Carlos and Israel Soteno from Metepec, Edo. de México and with artist Octavio Gómez in San Carlos Academy, Mexico City.

Led Zeppelin

Rey is perhaps the world's leading expert on Led Zeppelin bootleg recordings, compiling the 552pp Led Zeppelin Live, An Illustrated Exploration of Underground Tapes [1992] (1997) ISBN 0-9698080-7-0 . The work examines and catalogues 250 concerts and other little-known recordings from 1968 to 1980. He also contributed the liner notes for the Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions album.

External links

Luis V. Rey web gallery - Dinosaurs & Paleontology

Index of Rey cover art compiled at Locus Magazine

Dinosaur Delineator file on Rey

Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:Mexican illustrators Category:Mexican people of Spanish descent Category:National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni Category:British people of Mexican descent Category:Paleoart