Crossing The Bridges of San Luis Rey

If what I wanted while reading Cather was for an incident to be mined fully and to be laden with meaning, Wilder here has given me my wish. On the one hand, the book is the polar opposite of Cather's, for every incident is rife with meaning. On the other hand, the books are very similar, attempting to arrive at a truth about life through the tableau's of different life stories laid next to one another.

I enjoyed this book immensely. Wilder writes beautifully and directly, blending details and meanings in straightforward sentences that all work together to build to something grand. Moreover, the topic is epic while the subject is small and local; my favorite kind of story.

This is a novel about our efforts to find meaning in what seems like a random and meaningless world. Set in 1714 Peru, this novel seems worlds away from America and Europe after The Great War. But how many mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers must have been asking themselves "why?" in the wake of the war? Why did their loved ones die? Why did others survive? How could God let this all happen? I imagine the questions raised by the breaking of the bridge are the same as those asked by Wilder's contemporaries.

We are set up brilliantly by Wilder in the introductory section to read the lives of those fallen with great care, looking for some pattern or meaning, as Brother Juniper did. We are told that a great treatise was written on this subject, so we cannot help but think in those terms. Are we looking for irony? A cruel God? A just one? Should it make sense? We follow the narrator's retelling of these lives as a chain of cause and effect. We watch the lives interweave know that someone will be taking the spill down the chasm soon. Who? Why? We are encouraged to make connections and try to make sense as Juniper does. The frame of the novel plays an important role in our reading of the stories, which is just great writing on Wilder's part.

And then we get to the final section and Brother Juniper's method is revealed. Wow. Have waded through the complex emotions and responses of this set of people, to see that Juniper made a chart assigning people numbers to create some calculus to explain God is horrendous, and horrendously funny. The method of course fails him, so he tries to amass all the facts he can from all the sources he can, hoping that some great mind will come along to discover (or "surprise" as Wilder seems to like to say) the method to divine God's meaning. By this point, we know that such things are futile, and we are left with our own attempts to connect things. You must end with the resolution that you do not know and cannot know.

Wilder does not leave us in a state of hopelessness, though. He offers us one nugget, perhaps something we ourselves noticed. This book isn't just about finding meaning; it is about 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." Love IS meaning and the meaning IS love. All of these tales are about thwarted or lost love: The marquesa for her daughter, Pepita for the Abbess, Esteban for Manuel, Manuel for Camilla, Uncle Pio for Camilla and the theater she was to create, the Captain for his daughter, the Abbess for Pepita and the twins. Long before the bridge of San Luis Ray breaks, these bridges of love between two people break and those who live by that bridge fall long before they make the physical fall that begins the novel. The Marquesa, Esteban, Uncle Pio, they have all fallen from the bridge of love. They have all "discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other." Interestingly, it is as they attempt to mend those bridges or at least to move on that they meet their final fates. The Marquesa will be brave and less selfish; Esteban will join the captain and "do what we can" and "push on . . . as best we can"; Uncle Pio will find a replacement in Don Jaime; but those things are not to be. And what of Don Jaime and Pepita. And what of the survivors who find meaning by carrying on and loving backwards across the absence to make up for the first broken bridges?

The book gives you a lot to chew on, being emotional without becoming cute or trite.

As a final thought, what do you make of Camilla as being the only character who overlaps all the narratives. I think she is central to Wilder's thinking, but she would deserve an essay all to herself.

Jason (Goodness 2, Piety 0, Usefulness 8)