Reviewing the 100 Best Novels of the 20th
Century
by Annette Ferran
The
Bridge of San Luis Rey
The conceit of The Bridge of San Luis Rey (by Thorton Wilder, #37 on The Modern
Library’s list) is that it’s written by a scholar 200 years after an incident—the
collapse of a rope foot bridge—that had been explored and recounted at the time
by a monk whose work was subsequently largely (but not entirely) lost. Five people died when the bridge
collapsed and the monk’s exploration of these lives was meant to reveal the
meaning behind their deaths. Why these five people? Why together on this
bridge?
The
monk, as would be expected, approaches from the premise of Catholicism, and
with that bias seeks to confirm that God’s hand guides all events. The question
he wants to answer is whether death is foretold in a person’s life. The questions
the narrator (and the writer) seeks to answer are a bit more complicated. One is, can we in this modern age
accept the relatively easy premise of the first scholar’s work?
The
novel is constructed in five parts. The first explains the circumstance of the
story and the intent of the narrative. The next three tell the stories of the
five people. The last examines the scientific inquiry that the monk brought to
his analysis of the event.
There
is something in the tone of the first and last sections that seems to be baiting
our skepticism. Even the titles of
each section convey this: “Perhaps an Accident,” and “Perhaps an Intention.”
The middle sections read as short stories in their own right, each standing on
its own. They are old-fashioned in
style, not of the style of the modern short story, but in the style of an old
tale of people and events that are of interest to later generations.
The
five people who died are connected in various ways in life. There are family
relationships among some of them, and mentorship and patronage relationships
among others. Their stories are
largely sad and plagued by dissatisfactions, but in the telling of them, they
are all normal human stories, with nothing melodramatic to them. They are not
overtly pointed toward the support of the monk’s theory, as might be the
temptation in a less skilled writer’s hands. This collection of stories builds
a philosophical inquiry told in considered and gentle prose. The key to this
story is expressed in the last section:
“The discrepancy between faith and the facts is greater than is
generally presumed.”
Why read this book? Like Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop, this
novel presents an intriguing view of Catholicism not just as a religion but as
a cultural influence in the New World. The story takes place in Peru, and some
of the characters are natives while others still have ties to old Spain. The
characters span a range of classes.
The novel presents a world that is in setting, customs, and time foreign
to American readers. It keeps its
distance with its overlay of modern perspective, but at the same time immerses
the reader in the telling of the victims’ lives. It is linguistically rich without a word going to waste. It
is a tiny book, easy to read, readable in one sitting, that leads us into a
state contemplation, pondering questions of cosmic significance.
Annette Ferran
lives in Philadelphia where she works as an editor for a medical
publisher. She is also the
Associate Editor for 10,000 Tons ofBlack Ink, a Literary Writers Network publication. She has a degree of
dubious practical use, in German, and is a lifelong avid reader of fiction and
lover of lists. She has had a few short stories published, most recently in
RE:AL.
