The Bridge of San Luis Rey
by . New York: Albert and Charles Boni. 1927. 12mo. xiv+221 pp. Illus. $2.50.
WHEN The Cabala, a first novel, appeared last year, critics were bewildered by a book in which they could discover no traces of current influence. It was impossible to find a mark made upon the author by James Joyce, or Virginia Woolf, or Marcel Proust, by a war-bred realism, or by the romantic revolts against it. If he wrote like any American more than another, it was like Henry James — in his earlier manner. If he wrote like any European more than another, if was like Anatole France. They all agreed that, though his plot was a little tenuous, he wrote it uncommonly well. The art of the novel, against precedent, was here practised in all but its higher reaches in a first novel.
All these pleasant and surprising things can be said as well of Mr. W ilder’s second book. He keeps to the level of The (’abala. I in not sure but that be transcends it. In both books a number of characters, each with its own amazing story, are tied together tenuously but satisfactorily, in the first instance by a secret society, in the second by a common disaster. Against this artifice the reader musters little or no resentment as he closes the book — in part because the artifice gives half the flavor of the story, in part because the unity achieved is subtler and surer than it seems. In The Bridge of San Lirht Reg five characters are brought into the story by a bridge of osiers woven centuries ago in Peru, and which on a Friday noon in 1714 collapses, plunging the five to their death in a gully. The story reveals the pride, passion, sorrows, and joys of the five in their several lives up to the minute when by chance — or was it through an act of God? they meet their death on the bridge. To prove the disaster an ‘act of God,’ Brother Juniper writes a book. And thanks to his labors the reader reaps many a witty page.
By 1714, one is told, Peru had risen from the status of a pioneer wilderness to a state in renaissance. The masses of Palestrina were a delight to the faithful and the plays of Calderón to the gay. Camilla was an actress in the drama of Calderón, and in many ways she is the central figure of this book. But Uncle Pio (one of the five on the bridge) was Camila’s maid. ‘He was also,’ the author adds, ’her singing master, her coiffeur, her masseur, her reader, her errand boy, her banker: rumor added, her father.’ Of mysterious origin, he loved the Spanish language when spoken by a lovely woman. Ergo, he brought up Camilla from poverty to artistic greatness. But alas, in the end his hopes were blasted. She acquired respectability and deserted the theatre. She contracted the smallpox and her beauty left her. At the last her son and Uncle Pio are killed together on the bridge. Was t hat punishment for artistic apostasy, or Heaven * vengeance for the sin of being an actress?' Gh Brother Juniper! But I must cut short this brief sampling of a rich book. It is only fair to remind the reader that the satire here practised is a special blend that will sorely try his emotions. I suspect he will be forced many times to stifle embarrassed sobs over its wittiest pages.
CHARLES R. WALKER