Books: Wilder Home

HEAVEN’S MY DESTINATION — Thornton Wilder—Harper ($2.50).

Public response to Author Thornton Wilder has been chequered. His first book (The Cabala) was too clever to be popular. His second (The Bridge of San Luis Rey) was the best-selling phenomenon of 1927. Since then he has published a distinguished tour de force (The Woman of Andros), two collections of inconsiderable, unactable playlets (The Angel That Troubled the Waters, The Long Christmas Dinner). Carpers have accused him of being a literary showoff, say he once struck a lucky posture, will never repeat it. Communist Litterateur Mike Gold started the liveliest row the staid New Republic has had in years when he attacked Thornton Wilder as a vicious example of capitalistic author. U. S. critics have shaken their heads over Wilder, wished he would come home and up-to-date instead of wandering about the past of foreign countries. Readers wondered if he would ever write another book they would enjoy as much as The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

Last week Author Wilder surprised many a critic, pleased many a reader. Heaven’s My Destination came home and up-to-date with a vengeance. The story of an earnest young U. S. christer’s misadventures, it was an able translation of the Wilder talent into current American prose. Instead of Tanagra figurines or Spanish silhouets, the characters were animated U. S. cartoons, drawn with so subtle a line that they seemed more lifelike than comic. As usual in a Wilder story, the philosophic implications were hardly noticeable in the smooth façade of the story.

George Marvin Brush was a serious and determined young man. While he traveled his territory (he was a salesman of educational textbooks) he kept his hand in by writing religious mottoes on handy hotel blotters, rebuking girls who smoked, attempting to convert hard-boiled chance acquaintances. He was the strongest man who had ever been to his little sectarian college, and he had an excellent tenor voice, but somehow people did not like George Brush. Although he practically never did a wrong thing he was always getting into trouble, including jail. But his high-principled sincerity usually convinced his detractors that he was crazy and comparatively harmless. George Brush flinched at no opportunities to put his principles to the test, even experimented with new ones (such as a 24-hour vow of silence) that landed him in really nasty messes.

Not altogether perfect, George Brush had once, beset by a girl in a barn, sinned. Thereafter he regarded himself as married, sought her everywhere. When he found her again she was a waitress in Kansas City and not glad to see him, but he wore down her resistance, married her. His great ambition was to have a fine American home. But experience, domestic and otherwise, gradually undermined George Brush’s faith that he could get better and better until he was perfect. He lost his faith, his health, nearly died. But he was a strong young man. He recovered, and when last heard of was up to his old tricks again—an agnostic now, but as high-principled, experimentalizing as ever.

The Author. Second of five children with a mixed heritage of diplomacy and Presbyterianism, Thornton Niven Wilder was born in Madison, Wis. (1897), went to China at nine when his father was appointed U. S. Consul-General at Hong Kong, attended school there eight years. Back in the U. S. he finished his formal education at Thacher School, Oberlin College, the Coast Artillery Corps, Yale, where he got his A. B. in 1920. Even as a Yale undergraduate he gave promise of being one of the prize blossoms of the current “literary renaissance,” attracted the favorable attention of William Lyon Phelps and other Eli pundits. After two years abroad Wilder taught for seven years at Lawrenceville, took an M. A. at nearby Princeton. His 1928 Pulitzer-prizewinning The Bridge of San Luis Rey lifted him out of the academic rut. but two years later he returned to it of his own accord, now lectures on English & literature for six months a year at the University of Chicago.

Baldish. a bachelor, with a high, nervous voice. Author Wilder writes like an educated angel, talks like an educated Poll, still feels that he has much to learn.

Heaven’s My Destination is the January choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club.