Word: wilder
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Hero-Victim. "In the early summer of 1902," begins Wilder, "John Barrington Ashley of Coaltown, a small mining center in southern Illinois, was tried for the murder of Breckenridge Lansing, also of Coaltown. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Five days later, at 1 in the morning of Tuesday, July 22, he escaped from his guards on the train that was carrying him to his execution...
Expanding from this simple outline, Wilder embarks on a meandering parable of Good (Ashley) v. Evil (Lansing), that reaches into the genealogies of both men and their families as well as giving a detailed geographic and geologic history of the region. Ashley is fearless and worldly; yet he is a simple innocent, a hero-victim in mankind's headlong flight from the primal ooze. Lansing is a Babbitt, successful in business, boastful and bullying-a man who stands in direct contrast to the Ashleys of this world...
...Slowly, Wilder traces out the threads in the fabric of Lansing's life and his near-redemption; of Ashley, rescued from his prison train by a mysterious band of unarmed intruders; of the Lansing and Ashley children, and their children, until they are all sewed into meaningful stitches in God's (or Wilder's) design...
...suffragette, that Son Roger Ashley becomes a great financial success. Wherever the narrative demands a crucial, emotional confrontation, the author turns remote, reverts to brief explorations of life's enduring verities; and the reader is deprived of vital particulars. It is as if, viewing events from Olympus, Wilder sees the marvel of life but not the movement. The people of Coaltown, U.S.A. -Everytown, Universe-love, falter, hate, do good and deal in injustice, and carry on through eternity, still hanging on by the skin of their teeth, improving themselves a little as they go. In an old-fashioned mixture...
History, concludes Wilder, "is one tapestry. No eye can venture to compass more than a hand's-breadth. There is much talk of a design in the arras. Some are certain they see it. Some see what they have been told to see. Some remember that they saw it once but have lost it. Some are strengthened by seeing a pattern wherein the oppressed and the exploited of the earth are gradually emerging from their bondage. Some find strength in the conviction that there is nothing to see. Some...