The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder
Page 54
After the publication of The Eighth Day, Wilder retired to Martha’s Vineyard for two months. He wrote for several hours each day, trying to find the ideas and imagine the form that would shape his next creative venture. He changed his locale at the end of June, traveling to Stockbridge, New York, and New Haven, then returning to Martha’s Vineyard in September, where he and his sister bought a house. Wilder stayed on the island for the month of October, still with no definite writing project in mind. In November, as was his custom, he returned to Europe for the winter months, and, unusual for him, spent more than a month in Paris. Isabel joined him there for Christmas and then they left for their regular haunts in Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. While he was abroad, Wilder learned that The Eighth Day had won the 1968 National Book Award for Fiction. It had been on the New York Times best-seller list for twenty-six weeks.
He did not return to the United States for the ceremony; his thoughts were focused on the future and on his next “real right” writing project. He continued to write, as well as reading, rereading, and annotating the books in his collection, whether an old copy of Goethe’s poetry, a volume on Kierkegaard’s philosophy, or a new paperback treatise on linguistics, archaeology, or social science. Wilder was particularly interested in the authors whose fiction and nonfiction works informed or influenced the thinking of young people coming of age in the 1960s. When that generation challenged established social institutions and practices, he observed with interest the civil rights protests, dissent over university governance, and demonstrations against the Vietnam War, attempting to interpret these events in a more inclusive, universal context. This was especially true during the summer of 1968, when he was recuperating on Martha’s Vineyard from a long-delayed hernia operation. Wilder recovered in full and, like clockwork, was off to Europe in November to remove himself from interruptions to his writing life.
These periods abroad were as important to Wilder as the slow ocean voyages to get there and the hotel rooms he lived in; he considered the ships and rooms his “places of business,” his essential workplaces, his “offices.” This way of living was modified in the next few years, however. Soon after Wilder’s fiftieth Yale reunion in June 1970, he began to experience serious vision problems. In late June, he learned that this was a circulatory, rather than an ocular, problem. He was suffering from hypertension, and because his sight was reduced to some degree, he was advised to limit the time he spent using his eyes. During the almost three months he was in residence on Martha’s Vineyard, an additional ailment—severe back pain—also limited his activities. In the late fall of 1970, accompanied by his sister, Wilder took his last trip to Europe. Since he was no longer allowed to live at high altitudes, they spent the two months of their stay mostly in Venice and Cortina, Italy. They also went to Innsbruck and Zurich for a short time before returning to Italy, where they stayed in Naples. Wilder worked four hours a day, despite the problems caused by high blood pressure, poor eyesight, and intermittent deafness. He was on the brink of an idea for a new novel.
More than two years before, in February 1968, in Europe, he had begun a semiautobiographical, semifictional series of sketches drawn from different stages of his life. He continued to develop the separate pieces during his international and domestic travels thereafter. Now that Wilder’s journeys were limited to low altitudes, he spent the winter months each year in New Mexico, Texas, and Florida. When he returned to Hamden in the spring of 1972, the “real right” idea coalesced. He envisioned the protagonist for a projected chapter of his memoir as the hero of an entire novel, one devoted to his adventures in Newport, Rhode Island. Wilder began and finished this novel, Theophilus North, in his seventy-fifth year, writing it from April 1972 to April 1973. His final book, it was published in October 1973.
He began work on a sequel, which he was calling “Theophilus North—Zen Detective,” even as he was plagued with increasing health problems: a slipped disk, increasing blindness, continued high blood pressure, breathlessness while walking even at an unaccustomed slow pace, and, in September 1975, an operation for prostate cancer. Despite his poor physical condition, Wilder remained the same energetic and cheerful conversationalist as always, particularly at Thanksgiving dinner in 1975 in New York with his old friends Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. That holiday week in the city proved tiring, however. He returned from New York on December 6 to his home in Hamden, “The House The Bridge Built.” On December 7, still feeling tired, he took an afternoon nap and died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack.
276. TO NED ROREM. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Private
June 25. 1960<1961>
Dear Mr. Rorem:
Many thanks for your letter and interest.1
Sure, I’d be proud to have you find something there that you could set to music.
But I’ll have to ask you to wait a year.
There are three operas now being written to words of mine—and probably a fourth which has been pending a long time. This constitutes a sort of glut. I wouldn’t mind it, but the first two composers take the view that it diminishes their chances at getting a hearing, or some reservation like that.
If, after a year’s wait, you should still be interested, I would be inclined to ask you to consider the question as to whether it is worth your while to set to music such brief pieces. Those three-minute plays were more planned as dramatic exercises or sketches—than as practical theatre-pieces. I’m inclined to think that drama (and musical drama) doesn’t really begin to work under half-an-hour. But I’m not certain about this and we can discuss it later.
I wish I could suggest something for you to work on, in the meantime. I’ve never heard of anyone setting Edna Millay’s Aria da Capo2 to music. More and more I hear of productions, here and in Europe, of those fragments (imitation of an American revue) grouped around T. S. Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes3j
I’m sorry this letter may be a disappointment; I hope it’s only a delay.
All cordial best wishes.
Sincerely yours
Thornton Wilder
277. TO MARTHA NIEMOELLER.4 ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Wisconsin
July 25. 1961
Dear Miss Niemoeller:
Late in life I have taken a great interest in the Noh plays—first through Fenollosa and Pound.5 A Japanese translator (of my work) sent me as a present a most satisfying selection with a rich annotation. It’s a very great manifestation of theatre.
And I wish I had known it earlier in my life. My plays may seem to reflect some elements of Chinese and Japanese theatre but—in spite of the years I spent in the orient as a boy—I have not been aware of any influence prior to the ’40s that could derive from the East. My use of a “free” stage has other sources. (To this day I have never seen a Noh or Kabuki performance—and no Chinese theatre except that program of “selections” which Mei Lan Fang6 gave in New York in the 30s.)
My admiration for Noh was first caught by Claudel’s account in L’Oiseau du Soleil Levant (have I remembered that title correctly?)7 but by that time I had already written the plays you name.
No, I never met Copeau8 or Claudel.
So all I can say is that I deeply regret that I had not known Noh earlier. The six devices you list can also be found in other forms of drama. What I would have borrowed would be
the two-part drama—real, then supernatural.
the device of the journey
the relation of protagonist and chorus-observer.
the ideal spectator seated in the audience
the entrance of the Spirit across a “bridge”.
perhaps the use of quotations from classic poetry
All cordial best to you in your work
Sincerely yours,
Thornton Wilder
P.S. Both the addresses you give are very near my birthplace—heigh-ho 64 years ago
TNW
278. TORUTHGORDON ANDGARSONKANIN. A
LS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed Hotel Taft / New Haven, Conn.) Private
Sunday eve
August 27 <1961>
Dear Labor-Day-Week-End Merrymakers:
Look at where I am!
In a temple of sheer romance.
Time stands still here. Down the corridor Miss Ruth Gordon is studying the new act-ending for Saturday’s Children. Down another Garson Kanin is worrying about whether Judy Holliday can replace Jean Arthur. …Tallulah is screaming at Michael Myerberg. (A few years later she is (in The Eagle has Two Heads) throwing “that Marlo Brandy” out of the cast) and a few years later I’m sitting on the floor in Gadget’s suite after the first performance of Streetcar and Brando looks in the door for a minute with supreme contempt at all us effete intellectuals.9
Sheer romance.
x
I’m going to evoke delighted pictures of you all in the penthouse of The Sands at Las Vegas; but I’m going to congratulate you that I’m not there.
There’s an old almanac saw that “the friends of friends are friends.” Nothing is less certain.
Alec tried to endear me to Neysa (a frost), to Cornelia Otis Skinner (a freeze); but to Alice Duer Miller (soul-mates)*
*And we’re all indebted to Alex for Gus Eckstein who met him through Kit?12Sibyl tried to kindle a congeniality with Vita Sackville-West and Miss Mitford (arctic); with David Cecil and Cecil Beaton and Morgan Forster (not a vibration); but with Max Beerbohm (the flowers of friendship). Gertrude took this kind of lamp-lighting very seriously and suffered at her failures: who could like Bernard Fäy or Sir Francis Rose?10
The reason I don’t mix well is because I’m a “confiding nature.” Hence I fall silent when there are more than five people in a room. One can’t confide one’s tentative notions to a roundtable, to a circle; nor—save very exceptionally—to new acquaintance.
Enuff.
x
I hope I thanked you ringingly for the delicious dinner at Cote Basque and for the joy of seeing you—and Ruth so adorable in that dress (at the time I groped to describe it—the word came to me later: isn’t it “eyelet” embroidery, or something like that?)
x
Folks, after your quoting—on the phone—that wish of George Brush,11 I went downstairs to see if I had a copy. Yes, there it was. I certainly haven’t looked into it for 25 years. I read it. Long passages I seemed never to have read before. I must say I think it “holds”. Second, I was reminded of my feeling soon after writing: it could have been a longer book and each episode could have been longer. My passion for compression sure had me in its grip. It actually cries out for expansion—legitimate expansion to make its points. Thirdly, what a sad book it is! Fourthly, how the Depression hangs over it like a stifling cloud.
After Gertrude Stein continued her journey—having stayed 2 weeks in my apartment at the university of Chicago—she wrote from some place like Cornell:
“People tell us you have published a new book. Why did you not tell us you had written a new book. [No question mark.]”
So I sent the book—that book.
“We have read your book. Yes, in the middle it has balance. It is such a pleasure when a book has balance. Yes, I can say that in the middle it has balance.”
And, rereading it, I became aware of the moment when the book swung into balance. And the whole damn thing would have been in balance if I’d let it ride more easily and not tried to be so sec13 and compressed and drastic. I should’ a reread Don Quixote—of the relaxed free rein.
Lots of love
Thornt
279. TO URS HELMENSDORFER.14 ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Yale
Oct 14. 1961
Dear Herr Helmensdorfer:
Yes—long before I met M. Obey I had been deeply impressed by those first two plays he wrote for the Compagnie des Quinze,—Noé and Le Viol.15 But I never saw either of them in French and for several years I was not even able to find a copy to read. The Professors don’t always realize that literary influence can be propagated by the slightest of intimations: I had merely read brief accounts of the plays and of their productions. (Similarly I was deeply influenced by Paul Claudel’s account of a Noh play long before I was able to read one—if it can be said that any Westerner can really read a Noh play.)
Michel St. Denis’ method of staging—as I read about it—was also a large part of this influence: the treatment of Noah’s Ark—the fact that Tarquin prowling through the house walked merely between posts set up on the stage; the figures of the two commentators—all that was very exciting to me and led to my writing The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, The Long Christmas Dinner—and later the longer plays.16
It was years later when I had dinner with M. obey one night in Paris, the recollection of which is of his great distinction of mind and spirit.
I send all my cordial wishes for the success of your production.
With many regards,
Sincerely yours
Thornton Wilder
280. TO LOUISE TALMA. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Yale
In festo sancti
Valentini 1962
Dear Louise:
Where there’s a will there’s a way.
I went to the Captain and said:
“Captain, the Atlantic Ocean’s awfully wide. There’s a letter that I’d like to get to a certain party in Europe. And I can’t afford radio-telegraphy. Can’t you think of some other way?”
“Well, let me see.—They’re training porpoises and sea-gulls; but they haven’t quite taught them yet to read addresses.”
“Oh!—Aren’t there some inhabited islands we could stop at? The Canaries or Ascention?”
“Look here, Mr. Wilson, since you’re so serious about this, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make a left turn and stop at Halifax in Canada. Would that suit you? I won’t mention it in the Log—see what I mean?”
“Put it there, Captain. You wait and see if I don’t always cross on the Dutch Line.”
“Are you and Miss Watson comfortable?”
“Oh, yes. My sister has her bed-board and I have my… a-hem… basins… I have only one very small criticism to make… I’ll keep my voice down to a whisper: the orchestra doesn’t quite play in tune.”
“You don’t say!! I thought they did the Potpourri from Madame Butterfly very nicely”
“Oh, that.—Yes, all those quarter-tones and super-imposed keys added a certain interest that isn’t always there. But in that place where the Geisha says that some day Lieutenant Pilsbury18 will come,—you know, there’s real pathos there: because I doubt if he could find her.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, Captain, it’s like your charts. He’d be looking for her in E-Flat and she wouldn’t be there.”
“Why, Mr. Wesley—where’d she be?”
“Well, today I got the impression she was out shopping, at a considerable distance, too.”
“Well,” replied my Captain, drying his eyes, “there’s nothing like those old Japanese myths to move the human hear
“Yes, indeed, I will. What is it?”
“I want you to sit at my table so we can have some more meaty conversations like this. You can’t imagine the amount of drivel I have to listen to. And: in that letter of yours that we’re making this little detour for—be sure you put some more of this good sense into it—and this inspiration… How… how did you plan to end your letter?”
“I thought I’d simply say
‘with love,
Theodore.’”
281. TO CASS CANFIELD. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed Ritters Park Hotel / Bad Homburg v.d.H.) Yale
Last days in Frankfurt
March 13. 1962
Dear Cass:
At everyth
ing I do these days I whisper happily to myself “for the last time.”
Last lecture, last class, last “dinner coat”, last première, …. its a great feeling. By mid-May I shall be in the desert of Arizona, … loafing, cultivating my hobbies (Lope de Vega, Finnegans Wake, Shake-speare)<,> learning Russian, refurbishing ancient Greek… And after a while, doing some writing. I should have retired long ago.
An odd thing happened at our opera-première here—unprecedented ovation… curtain calls for 19 minutes. The composer Louise Talma naturally elated …then in the next few days the critics’ reviews: none denied her mastery of means, but all but two have been severe. These things don’t affect me (an old battered ship) but it is especially hard for Louise with her first large work and coming after that undoubted appreciation by the audience.
Rè Goldstone. A friendship picked up in officers’ messes in the army. Well, I tried to be obliging. I submitted to the Paris Review thing groaning; but most of it was from tape and many answers I submitted in longhand.20 But I told him that that was to be all. Imagine my horror when I heard that he was writing to old friends (Bob Hutchins and Harry Luce etc) for character sketches etc. Hell’s Blazes!! What could be more mortifying. And for them to think that I was behind it—gloatingly waiting for any pretty things they might say about me.
I’ve told Goldstone over and over again that I won’t have it. But he has the skin of a rhinoceros. All his fellow-profs at N.Y.U<.> are publishing—have gotta publish. And he’s got his teeth set.
I won’t help him one inch.
And I’ve written several friends to slap him down.
If there’s ever to be a book about me (and what an uneventful putter-putter book that will be) let Isabel do it. It’s not any harsh truths that I mind, its the unfocus’d admiration of a Goldstone—which also contains almost unknown to himself a good measure of animus,—especially now when I’ve had to treat him so badly.