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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1920
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1920s) The Bridge Of San Luis Rey
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1920s Highlights
Books
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(DECEMBER 5, 1927)
</p>
<p> The Bridge of San Luis Rey--Thornton Wilder. "On Friday noon,
July the 20th, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and
precipitated five travellers into the gulf below." The five
people were: The Marquesa de Montemayor and Pepita, her
companion, Esteban, the brother of Manuel, Uncle Pio, and Don
Jaime the son of the actress whom he had loved and made famous.
Now why had a bridge upon whose miraculous high path everyone
in Peru had stepped at one time or another postponed its decay
to include these particular people in its destruction? Was it
an accident or an intention? Author Wilder explores the lives
of the five; each one had achieved in life, just before the
falling of the Bridge of San Luis Rey, a kind of completion. So,
at the end, "There is a land of the living and a land of the
dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only
meaning." The delicacies of Author Wilder's prose cannot be
intimated in so rude a summary of the material of his book,
which will be acceptable, like his first novel The Cabala,
mainly to those who are sophisticates in both life and letters.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>