Our Town and the Cosmic One-Acts - (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions) by Thornton Wilder (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A beautifully designed deluxe gift edition of the enduring and quintessentially American, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, together with three of Thornton Wilder's brilliant "cosmic" one-act plays.

A beloved American classic for nearly nine decades, Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Our Town is an allegorical representation of life. Set in the mythical village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, it considers timeless questions about the meaning of love, existence, and death.

Neighbors George Gibbs and Emily Webb share a childhood friendship that has blossomed into romance and culminates in marriage. When Emily dies in childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts--childhood, adulthood, and death--is fully realized.

This beautiful deluxe edition also includes three of Wilder's acclaimed one-act plays: The Long Christmas Dinner, The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden," and Pullman Car Hiawatha.

The Long Christmas Dinner spans nine decades and showcases the lives of several generations of the Bayard family, observed through years of Christmas dinners. Wilder breaks the boundaries of measured time, inviting us to partake in "one long, happy Christmas dinner" that is a portrait of past, present and future. As generations appear, have children, grow old, and die, only the audience appreciates what changes and what endures.

The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden tells the story of a family's drive across the length of New Jersey, from Newark to Camden, to visit their married daughter who has recently lost her baby in childbirth. Their journey is punctuated by talk, laughter, memories, and appreciation of the Now--ham and eggs, flowers, family, sunsets, and the joy of being alive. It is a family drama, in which little occurs--yet everything important happens.

Pullman Car Hiawatha is a comedy set aboard a train car traveling from New York to Chicago in December 1930. Wilder suspends conventional time as he takes us on a metaphorical journey through the American landscape alongside a diverse band of travelers hurtling through time, space, and a range of emotions.

Like Our Town, these emotionally powerful short works are stripped down to their essence--using spare stagecraft and simple characterizations--to illuminate timeless truths about life and humanity. This trio of short acts was originally published in 1931 and point the way to Our Town--making this a special collectable volume of Wilder's most cosmic works.

Review Quotes

"Taking as his material three periods in the history of a placid New Hampshire town, Mr. Wilder has transmuted the simple events of human life into universal reverie. He has given familiar facts a deeply moving, philosophical perspective....Our Town is one of the finest achievements of the current stage." -- Brooks Atkinson, American theater critic

"Its astringent distillation of life and death in the fictional early-20th-century town of Grover's Corners, N.H., is desperately needed. . . so Americans can remember who we are. . . . The true American faith endures in 'Our Town'." -- Frank Rich, New York Times

"Wilder's unfashionable insistence on embracing wonders as well as woe is both gallant and exhilarating. . . . Our Town leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth" -- The New Yorker

"Our Town demonstrates in the most gentle way, the most celebrational way, how difficult it is to be a human being." -- Will Eno, American playwright

"Our Town is probably the finest play ever written by an American." -- Edward Albee

"In Our Town, Wilder cautions us to recognize that life is both precious and ordinary, and that these two fundamental truths are intimately connected." -- New York Times