Source
of book: I own this.
Last
year, our library sale had a huge collection of Library of America hardbacks
for sale at crazy-low prices ($3-5 a book). While I couldn’t get all of them, I
did pick up a couple dozen to add to my collection. Two of those add up
together to be the major works of Thornton Wilder.
Because
of the Covid-19 shutdown, I have been unable to see live theater for a couple
months. (Kudos to local thespians for all the fun stuff they are doing online -
you guys and gals are one of the best things about this town!) Instead, I have
been reading more drama.
I like this cover because it captures the sparse set, the use of the stars as a theme,
and the way it asks the audience to fill in the scene from imagination.
I
decided to read Our Town for two reasons. First, it is one of Wilder’s
best known works - and it won a Pulitzer. But also, the movie version features
the music of Aaron Copland, which I got to play a bit of for a movie concert
back in the day.
A small-town orchestra to go with a small town.
In
addition to the play itself, I read the additional materials in this volume:
three short pieces by Wilder on the play, plus part of the correspondence
between Wilder and producer Sol Lesser as they worked together to revise the
screenplay for the movie.
First
performed in 1938, Our Town seems fairly tame by today’s standards. But
at the time, it was unusual and experimental. There is no scenery, a few chairs
and tables for props, and the “Stage Manager” breaks the fourth wall and
addresses the audience throughout. Questions from carefully planted members of
the “audience” also ask questions in the first act. These innovations seem
normal now, over 80 years later, but were hardly usual at the time. The play
also seems traditional in its values, but was perhaps a bit shocking to a 1930s
audience. I’ll get to why on that later.
The
play is set in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, at the
turn of the 20th Century. It is one of those “typical” New England towns with
white clapboard houses, just changing over from horses to cars, and so on. To
go with this idea and the sparse staging, Wilder directed that “It is important
to maintain a continual dryness of tone, -- the New England
understatement of sentiment, of surprise, of tragedy. A shyness about
emotion.”
In
addition, as the state manager notes that the town is putting in a new bank with
a time capsule (so popular in those days), and that this play can serve as a
corrective to all the “official” stuff: a record of everyday life.
And
so the play is, in a way. But it isn’t just a snapshot of small-town New
England and its ordinary folk denizens. It actually carries a modern (and
timeless) message about the importance of valuing everyday life, and living in
the moment.
The
play is in three acts. The first is that snapshot of two families in Grover’s
Corners, those of prominent but not wealthy citizens: the doctor, and the
newspaper publisher. Their children are tweens and teens, and it is clear that
the doctor’s son may have a crush on the publisher’s daughter. One of the
questions from the “audience” and the response are rather amusing.
LADY IN A BOX: Oh, Mr.
Webb [the publisher]? Mr. Webb, is there any culture or love of beauty in
Grover’s Corners?
MR WEBB: Well, ma’am,
ther ain’t much--not in the sense you mean. Come to think of it, there’s some
girls that play the piano at High School Commencement; but they ain’t happy
about it. No, ma’am, there isn’t much culture; but maybe this is the place to
tell you that we’ve got a lot of pleasures of a kind here: we like the sun
comin’ up over the mountain in the morning, and we all notice a good deal about
the birds. We pay a lot of attention to them. And we watch the change of the
seasons; yes, everybody knows about them. But those other things--you’re right,
ma’am,--there ain’t much.--Robinson Crusoe and the Bible; and Handel’s
“Largo,” we all know that; and Whistler’s “Mother”--those are just about as far
as we go.
This
is a fun link to The Moonstone and the use of Robinson
Crusoe as a sacred text.
In
the second act is the wedding between George and Emily, with a flashback in the
middle to how they realized they loved each other. This act is pretty
emotionally complex, with both George and Emily appearing afraid of marriage
and commitment at the last moment, revealing their feelings to the audience
through monologues with the scene frozen.
Personally,
this felt weird to me, because my own experience with marriage was so
different. Neither of us had anything resembling cold feet or fear about marriage.
(Irritation at the wedding planning process yes - we have agreed to elope if we
ever renew our vows…) We weren’t naive, either. We both knew each other well,
and had both good judgment and great chemistry on our side. Likewise, there was
no fear of the honeymoon. And we had a blast in every possible way. Obviously
marriage isn’t one long ecstasy - we have had our tough moments too - but we
both have had more fun than we expected too.
Perhaps
one telling exchange here is in the incident where George and Emily realize
they love each other. George has been so focused on baseball that he has gotten
a reputation as stuck up. Emily calls him out, and he feels the weight of
it.
EMILY: I always expect
a man to be perfect and I think he should be.
GEORGE: Oh . . . I
don’t think it’s possible to be perfect, Emily.
EMILY: Well, my father
is, and as far as I can see your father is. There’s no reason on earth
why you shouldn’t be too.
GEORGE: Well, I feel
it is the other way round. That men aren’t naturally good; but girls are.
EMILY: Well, you might
as well know right now that I’m not perfect. It’s not as easy for a girl to be
perfect as a man, because we girls are more--more--nervous.--Now I’m sorry I
said all that about you. I don’t know what made me say it.
This
is a well-written exchange. Both are expressing flawed views - based on gender
essentialism of course - that interfere with their ability to really see the
other. But they are still a good match, and legitimately good kids. Wilder
handles dialogue like this in such an understated way, but with a lot more
nuance when you think carefully about it. A good pair of actors could take
these lines in different directions, for sure.
In
the third act, we learn that thirteen years later, Emily has died in childbirth
(sorry about the spoiler, but the play is 80 years old…) Several of the
other characters are dead now as well, and resting in the graveyard. They are
conscious, but waiting. Not waiting for judgment, but for the future. A future
when they will see clearly and become most themselves. This is in contrast to
the living, who live “in closed boxes” - caskets of their own, where they
cannot see the big picture. Emily goes back to her twelfth birthday (against
the advice of the other dead), and receives not pleasure, but horror at seeing
how everyone fails to live in the moment, but are so distracted as to not
really see or hear each other.
This
is the bit that I mentioned above that probably seemed controversial at the
time. Wilder explains in the other materials, however, that it wasn’t his idea
exactly - it’s from Purgatory. (Wilder does not appear to have been religious
in the usual sense, but the play itself assumes some sort of transcendence and
religious truth.) The positive vision of the future as the time when we all see
clearly face to face rather than darkly through a glass is why I cannot say the
play is in the least pessimistic. It is rather positive overall.
The
ending differs in the movie: Emily turns out to have dreamt of her death
instead, and she is given a chance to live with the insight. The correspondence
between Wilder and Lesser discusses this change - which Wilder approved of
completely. In his view, the screen and the stage were different, and
expectations were different, and killing a beloved character didn’t fit with
the message of the play when done on screen. In the stage version, Wilder felt
that it was clearly metaphorical, and the death of Emily was easily seen as a
“death comes for us all” moment.
By
the way, the correspondence is fascinating. The portion reprinted was selected
to represent the discussion of bigger ideas, rather than fine details, but
there is a lot left of the viewpoints of the two men regarding the differences
between stage and screen, particularly the different ways to convey the sense
of the whole town from scenes which see only small places. Both men clearly
care about the final product - and see it as fine art, not mere flashy
entertainment. They both are congenial and admire each other. It was a good
working partnership.
It
would be interesting to see Our Town on stage some time. Perhaps one of
our local theater groups will take on the challenge someday.
One
final note: Wilder is one of a very few who have won three or more Pulitzer prizes,
and the only one to have won for both drama and a novel. Our Town was
the second of the three. His 1927 novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey was
the first, and the third was the play The Skin of Our Teeth. Both are on
my eventual reading list.
