Thursday, August 2, 2007
The Bridge of San Luis ReyMinneapolis
Listening to and watching reports of the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis/St. Paul, I was reminded of one of my favorite books, Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey. If you haven't read it, you should not pass Go but immediately grab a copy and read it. It's one of those books that takes hold of you from the very beginning with a famous opening line ("On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below"). And it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928.
The essence of The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a meditation on the meaning of life and love cloaked in a gripping story. The 1714 collapse really happened, just like the 2007 collapse in Minnesota, and Wilder posits an observer of the bridge's collapse who writes about his horror that so many people are be killed instantly and, perhaps more intriguingly, together. The book also leads us to wonder if there is any reason for their deaths, in a spiritual or cosmic sense. I wish I were a journalist in Minneapolis. Maybe I should find one and suggest this as a way to write about the people on the I-35W Bridge at 6:07 p.m. on August 1, 2007.
Anyway, back to Minnesota. Alan of Fresh Bilge, who knows the area well, wrote something fascinating. He said he "wouldn’t be surprised if other collapses hit the Twin Cities. They use far too much road salt during the long Minnesota winters: it rots out the cars, and eventually even steel girders give way. It’s time for local authorities to cut back the chemicals and rely more on old fashioned sand." Not to mention that apparently the bridge was ruled "structurally deficient" in 2005 but not retrofitted in whatever way would have been needed. What the heck is wrong with people? Does "deficient" mean "okay" in any dictionary? Will it be less expensive to pay lawsuits than it would have been to fix the deficiencies? I think not.
The essence of The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a meditation on the meaning of life and love cloaked in a gripping story. The 1714 collapse really happened, just like the 2007 collapse in Minnesota, and Wilder posits an observer of the bridge's collapse who writes about his horror that so many people are be killed instantly and, perhaps more intriguingly, together. The book also leads us to wonder if there is any reason for their deaths, in a spiritual or cosmic sense. I wish I were a journalist in Minneapolis. Maybe I should find one and suggest this as a way to write about the people on the I-35W Bridge at 6:07 p.m. on August 1, 2007.
Anyway, back to Minnesota. Alan of Fresh Bilge, who knows the area well, wrote something fascinating. He said he "wouldn’t be surprised if other collapses hit the Twin Cities. They use far too much road salt during the long Minnesota winters: it rots out the cars, and eventually even steel girders give way. It’s time for local authorities to cut back the chemicals and rely more on old fashioned sand." Not to mention that apparently the bridge was ruled "structurally deficient" in 2005 but not retrofitted in whatever way would have been needed. What the heck is wrong with people? Does "deficient" mean "okay" in any dictionary? Will it be less expensive to pay lawsuits than it would have been to fix the deficiencies? I think not.
Labels: headlines, reflections, writing
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