Wilder, Thornton (Vol. 5) - Wilder, Thornton 1897–

Wilder, Thornton 1897–

Wilder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright and novelist, writes elegant and inventive "dramatic hymns to human endurance" about ordinary human beings "living in an inscrutable but benevolent universe." His great plays, Our Town and Skin of Our Teeth, are distinguished as experiments in theatrical technique and by what is considered particularly American charm and humor. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 13-16, rev. ed.)

Thornton Wilder … is thought of, together with O'Neill, Miller, and Williams, as one of our "Big Four," and yet his reputation is based on only three full-length plays and was made on one…. For some he is the great American satirist; for others he is a soft-hearted sentimentalist; and for still others he is our only "religious" dramatist. Furthermore…. Brecht, Ionesco, Duerrenmatt, and Frisch have all acknowledged their debt to this "great and fanatical experimenter."...

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