Editing Thornton Wilder (section)

==Career==
[[File:Craven-Scott-Craven-Our-Town.jpg|thumb|[[Frank Craven]], [[Martha Scott]], and [[John Craven (actor)|John Craven]] in the original [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] production of ''[[Our Town]]'', published in 1938, which won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Drama]]]]
[[File:Thornton Wilder (1948).jpg|thumb|Wilder as Mr. Antrobus in ''The Skin of Our Teeth'' in 1948]]
[[File:Thornton-Wilder-TIME-1953.jpg|thumb|Wilder on the cover of the January 12, 1953 issue of [[Time (magazine)|''Time'']] magazine]]
After graduating, Wilder went to Italy and studied [[archaeology]] and Italian (1920–21) as part of an eight-month residency at [[The American Academy in Rome]], and then taught French at the [[Lawrenceville School]] in [[Lawrenceville, New Jersey]], beginning in 1921.<ref name=marg/> His first novel, [https://www.thorntonwilder.com/the-cabala-and-the-woman-of-andros ''The Cabala''], was published in 1926. In 1927, ''[[The Bridge of San Luis Rey]]'' brought him commercial success and his first [[Pulitzer Prize]] (1928).<ref name=pulitzernovel/> He resigned from the Lawrenceville School in 1928. From 1930 to 1937, he taught at the [[University of Chicago]], during which time he published his translation of [[André Obey]]'s own adaptation of the tale "Le Viol de Lucrece" (1931) under the title "Lucrece" (Longmans Green, 1933).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/reviews/05-2000/lucrece_714.html |title=Lucrece |first1=Barbara |last1=Siegel |first2=Scott |last2=Siegel |date=May 22, 2000 |work=TheaterMania.com}}</ref> In Chicago, he became famous as a lecturer and was chronicled on the celebrity pages.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Jones |first=Chris |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/ct-prj-1223-thornton-wilder-20121228-column.html |title=Our town was Wilder's town too |work=Chicago Tribune |access-date=February 13, 2020}}</ref> In 1938, he won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Drama]] for his play ''[[Our Town]]'', and he won the prize again in 1943 for his play ''[[The Skin of Our Teeth]]''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/218 |title=Drama – The Pulitzer Prizes |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=2017 |website=Pulitzer |publisher=Columbia University |access-date=April 27, 2017 }}</ref>

[[World War II]] saw Wilder rise to the rank of [[Lieutenant colonel (United States)|lieutenant colonel]] in the [[United States Army Air Forces|U.S. Army Air Force]] Intelligence, first in Africa, then in Italy until 1945. He received several awards for his military service.<ref group=fn>The American [[Legion of Merit]] and [[Bronze Star]], ''Chevalier'' of the ''[[Legion d'Honneur]]'' from France, and an honorary [[Member of the Order of the British Empire]] (MBE) from Britain.</ref> He went on to be a visiting professor at [[Harvard University]], where he served for a year as the [[Charles Eliot Norton Lectures|Charles Eliot Norton professor]]. Though he considered himself a teacher first and a writer second, he continued to write all his life, receiving the [[Peace Prize of the German Book Trade]] in 1957 and the [[Presidential Medal of Freedom]] in 1963. In 1968 he won the [[National Book Award]] for his novel ''[[The Eighth Day (Wilder novel)|The Eighth Day]]''.<ref>[https://www.thorntonwilder.com/the-eighth-day] The Wilder Family Website</ref><ref name=nba1968/>

Proficient in four languages,<ref name=marg>{{cite book |first=Donald |last=Margulies |title=Our Town – A Play in Three Acts |publisher=HarperPerennial |year=1998 |at=[https://archive.org/details/ourtownplayinthr00wild_1/page/ Foreword and "About The Author" by Margulies] |isbn=978-0-06-051263-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/ourtownplayinthr00wild_1/page/ }}</ref> Wilder translated plays by [[André Obey]] and [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]. He wrote the [[Libretto|libretti]] of two operas, ''[[The Long Christmas Dinner (opera)|The Long Christmas Dinner]]'', composed by [[Paul Hindemith]], and ''[[The Alcestiad]]'', composed by [[Louise Talma]] and based on his own play. [[Alfred Hitchcock]], whom he admired, asked him to write the screenplay of his thriller ''[[Shadow of a Doubt]]'',<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kornhaber |first=Donna |title=Hitchcock's Diegetic Imagination: Thornton Wilder, ''Shadow of a Doubt'', and Hitchcock's Mise-en-Scène |journal=Clues: A Journal of Detection |volume=31 |issue=1|year=2013 |pages=67–78 |doi=10.3172/CLU.31.1.67  }}</ref> and he completed a first draft for the film.<ref name=marg/>

''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' (1927) tells the story of several unrelated people who happen to be on a bridge in [[Peru]] when it collapses, killing them. Philosophically, the book explores the question of why unfortunate events occur to people who seem "innocent" or "undeserving". It won the Pulitzer Prize<ref name=NYT/> in 1928, and in 1998 it was selected by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century. The book was quoted by [[British Prime Minister]] [[Tony Blair]] during the memorial service for victims of the [[September 11 attacks]] in 2001.<ref>{{cite news |title=Text of Tony Blair's reading in New York |place=London, UK |newspaper=The Guardian |date=September 21, 2001 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/21/september11.usa11 |access-date=June 3, 2009 |quote= "A witness to the deaths, wanting to make sense of them and explain the ways of God to his fellow human beings, examined the lives of the people who died, and these words were said by someone who knew the victims, and who had been through the many emotions, and the many stages, of bereavement and loss.<br><br>"But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love. The only survival, the only meaning."}}</ref> Since then its popularity has grown enormously.{{fact|date=January 2021}} The book is the progenitor of the modern disaster epic in literature and [[disaster film|film-making]], where a single disaster intertwines the victims, whose lives are then explored by means of flashbacks to events before the disaster.{{Citation needed|date = April 2017}}

Wilder wrote ''[[Our Town]]'', a popular play (and later film) set in fictional Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. It was inspired in part by [[Dante Alighieri|Dante's]] ''Purgatorio''<ref>Breyer, Jackson R. editor. Rojcewicz, Stephen. "Our Tears: Lacrimae Rerum and Thorton Wilder". ''Thornton Wilder in Collaboration: Collected Essays on His Drama and Fiction''. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, December 17, 2018. p. 166 {{ISBN|978-1-5275-2364-7}}.</ref><ref>Erhard, Elise. "Searching for Our Town". ''Crisis Magazine''.  February 7, 2013.</ref> and in part by his friend [[Gertrude Stein]]'s novel ''The Making of Americans''.<ref>Konkle, Lincoln. ''Thornton Wilder and the Puritan Narrative Tradition''. University of Missouri Press (2006). pp. 7–10. {{ISBN|978-0-8262-6497-8}}</ref> Wilder suffered from [[writer's block]] while writing the final act. ''Our Town'' employs a choric narrator called the [[Stage manager|Stage Manager]] and a [[minimalism|minimalist]] set to underscore the human experience. Wilder himself played the Stage Manager on Broadway for two weeks and later in [[summer stock]] productions. Following the daily lives of the Gibbs and Webb families, as well as the other inhabitants of Grover's Corners, the play illustrates the importance of the universality of the simple, yet meaningful lives of all people in the world in order to demonstrate the value of appreciating life. The play won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize.<ref name=pulitzerdrama/>

In 1938, [[Max Reinhardt]] directed a Broadway production of ''[[The Merchant of Yonkers]]'', which Wilder had adapted from [[Austria]]n playwright [[Johann Nestroy]]'s ''[[Einen Jux will er sich machen]]'' (1842). It was a failure, closing after 39 performances.<ref>{{cite book |last=Niven |first=Penelope |title=Thornton Wilder: A Life |publisher=Harper |year=2012 |page=471}}</ref>

His play ''[[The Skin of Our Teeth]]'' opened in New York on November 18, 1942, featuring [[Fredric March]] and [[Tallulah Bankhead]]. Again, the themes are familiar – the timeless human condition; history as progressive, cyclical, or entropic; literature, philosophy, and religion as the touchstones of civilization. Three acts dramatize the travails of the Antrobus family, allegorizing the [[alternate history]] of mankind. It was claimed by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, authors of ''[[A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake]]'', that much of the play was the result of unacknowledged{{dubious|date=December 2024}} borrowing from [[James Joyce]]'s last work.<ref group=fn>[[Joseph Campbell]] and [[Henry Morton Robinson]] published a pair of reviews-cum-denunciations entitled "The Skin of ''Whose'' Teeth?" in the ''[[Saturday Review (US magazine)|Saturday Review]]'' immediately after the play's debut; these created a huge uproar at the time. Campbell's {{cite book |title=Mythic Worlds, Modern Words |year=2004 |location=Novato, California |publisher=[[New World Library]] |pages=257–266 |isbn=978-1-57731-406-6 |mode=cs2}} reprints the reviews and discusses the controversy.</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Pathways to Bliss |first=Joseph |last=Campbell |year=2005 |location=Novato, California |publisher=[[New World Library]] |pages=[https://archive.org/details/pathwaystoblissm00camp/page/121 121–123] |isbn=978-1-57731-471-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/pathwaystoblissm00camp/page/121 }}</ref>

In his novel ''[[The Ides of March (novel)|The Ides of March]]'' (1948), Wilder reconstructed the characters and events leading to, and culminating in, the assassination of [[Julius Caesar]]. He had met [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] on a U.S. lecture tour after the war, and was under the influence of [[existentialism]], although rejecting its [[atheist]] implications.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Art of Thornton Wilder |url=https://archive.org/details/artofthorntonwil0000gold |url-access=registration |first=Malcolm |last=Goldstein |year=1965 |location=Lincoln |publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]] |pages=[https://archive.org/details/artofthorntonwil0000gold/page/19 19–20] |isbn=978-0-80320-057-9}}</ref>

In 1954, [[Tyrone Guthrie]] encouraged Wilder to rework ''The Merchant of Yonkers'' into ''[[The Matchmaker]]''. This time the play opened in 1955 and enjoyed a healthy Broadway run of 486 performances with [[Ruth Gordon]] in the title role, winning a [[Tony Award]] for Guthrie, its director. It became the basis for the hit 1964 musical ''[[Hello, Dolly! (musical)|Hello, Dolly!]]'', with a book by [[Michael Stewart (playwright)|Michael Stewart]] and score by [[Jerry Herman]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Theatre-Review/hello-dolly-new-wimbledon-theatre-review |title=Hello Dolly! – New Wimbledon Theatre (Review) |work=indielondon.co.uk |date=March 2008}}</ref>

In 1960, Wilder was awarded the first ever [[Edward MacDowell Medal]] by [[The MacDowell Colony]] for outstanding contributions to American culture.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.macdowell.org/medal-day-history|title=Macdowell Medalists|accessdate=August 22, 2022}}</ref>

In 1962 and 1963, Wilder lived for 20 months in the small town of [[Douglas, Arizona]], apart from family and friends. There he started his longest novel, ''The Eighth Day'', which went on to win the [[National Book Award]].<ref name=nba1968/> According to Harold Augenbraum in 2009, it "attack[ed] the big questions head on, ... [embedded] in the story of small-town America".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nbafictionblog.org/nba-winning-books-blog/1968.html |last=Augenbraum |first=Harold |title=1968: The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder |date=July 23, 2009 |work=National Book Foundation |access-date=March 28, 2012 |archive-date=March 20, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120320200417/http://www.nbafictionblog.org/nba-winning-books-blog/1968.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

His last novel, ''[[Theophilus North]]'', was published in 1973, and made into the film ''[[Mr. North]]'' in 1988.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.mcall.com/1988/11/17/with-mr-north-danny-huston-gets-his-bearings-as-a-director/ |title=With 'Mr. North,' Danny Huston Gets His Bearings As A Director |date=November 17, 1988 |first=Amy |last=Longsdorf |work=The Morning Call}}</ref>

The Library of America republished all of Wilder's plays in 2007, together with some of his writings on the theater and the screenplay of ''Shadow of a Doubt''.<ref>{{cite book |title=Collected Plays and Writings on Theater |editor-first=J. D. |editor-last=McClatchy |first=Thornton |last=Wilder |year=2007 |location=New York |publisher=Library of America |isbn=978-1-59853-003-2 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/collectedplayswr0000wild }}</ref> In 2009, a second volume was released, containing his first five novels, six early stories, and four essays on fiction.<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=306 |first=Thornton |last=Wilder |title=The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels 1926–1948 |isbn=978-1-59853-045-2|year=2009 |publisher=Library of America }}</ref> Finally, the third and final volume in the Library of America series on Wilder was released in 2011, containing his last two novels ''The Eighth Day'' and ''Theophilus North'', as well as four autobiographical sketches.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Eighth Day, Theophilus North, Autobiographical Writings |editor-first=J. D. |editor-last=McClatchy |first=Thornton |last=Wilder |year=2011 |location=New York |publisher=Library of America |isbn=978-1-59853-146-6}}</ref>