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 : The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5203
EAN: 9780060765071
ISBN: 0060765070
Label: Harper
Manufacturer: Harper
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 768
Publication Date: October 01, 2008
Publisher: Harper
Release Date: October 07, 2008
Studio: Harper




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Editorial Review:

Product Description:


This volume of more than three hundred letters, selected from some seven thousand gathered around the world, is the first to provide a comprehensive collection of Thornton Wilder's correspondence. Wilder was known as a man who knew everybody, and these letters vividly document the range of his friendships. Readers will find him roller-skating with Walt Disney, attending an inaugural reception for FDR at the White House, describing his life as a soldier in two World Wars, mentoring younger writers, dining out with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and savoring his association with colorful local citizens during his twenty-month stay as a self-styled “hermit” in an Arizona mining town.



Through Wilder's correspondence, readers can eavesdrop on his conversations with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein. Noël Coward, Max Reinhardt, Gene Tunney, Alexander Woollcott, Laurence Olivier, Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin, Aaron Copeland, Paul Hindemith, Leonard Bernstein, Edward Albee, and Mia Farrow. Equally absorbing are Wilder's intimate letters to his family.



The author of such classics as Our Town and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder was a born storyteller and dramatist; we see that talent emerging in scenes and incidental dialogue in his letters. With characteristic exuberance, he draws on his vast reservoir of learning and his incessant reading to inform, encourage, instruct, and entertain. In this collection, Thornton Wilder speaks for himself in his own unique, enduring voice.





Customer Reviews
Average Rating:  out of 5 stars

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Not really a great letter writer
Wilder is not one of the great letter writers , though he must have been an admirable correspondent, and late in life he lashes out at a would-be biographer whose take on him was going to be that Wilder led a lonely life, by responding with a list of great friends. I had 400 letters from Ruth Gordon, he cries out. Sometimes it feels as though all 400 were in this book.

I yield to no one in my admiration for Thornton Wilder's plays, and I believe that the Library of America Wilder is ... Read More







 






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