Books: Wilder-ness

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The Significance. Author Wilder writes of paganism which to all intents is nearly Christian; of an almost prehistoric, primitive community which is more cultivated, up-to-date, than a comparable community today. Not that Author Wilder is primarily didactic, but that his beliefs show plainly through the words he has written. He is an exception among U. S. writers in that he is a believing Christian. He writes tales of artless faith cast in exotic settings. An accomplished artist, his drawing employs an apparently simple, but effective and carefully studied line, and he knows where to draw it.

The Author. Thornton Niven Wilder, famed, young, bespectacled, was born in Madison, Wis. (1897), but his family are New Englanders. He spent his early years in China, where his father, Amos P., was Consul-General; went to Thatcher School, California; graduated from Yale in 1920. At Yale he was a member of the "Pundits," band of undergraduate intellectuals which met fortnightly under the aegis of Dr. William Lyon Phelps. Author Wilder's first book, The Cabala, was a succés d'estime; his second, The Bridge of San Luis Key, won him the Pulitzer Prize ($1,000) in 1928, when he was a master at Lawrenceville Academy. He is slim, dark, nervous, baldish; speaks in a stumbling rush when excited. He admires Authors James Joyce, the late great Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Glenway Wescott, Francis Scott Fitzgerald. He has also written: The Angel That Troubled the Waters, The Trumpet Shall Sound (a play). He is now lecturing on classical literature at the University of Chicago.