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The Eighth Day: A Novel
by: Thornton Wilder

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780060088910
ISBN: 0060088915
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 512
Publication Date: January 01, 2007
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Release Date: January 02, 2007
Sales Rank: 184144
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics

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Product Description:

This new edition of Thornton Wilder's renowned 1967 National Book Award–winning novel features a new foreword by John Updike and an afterword by Tappan Wilder, who draws on such unique sources as Wilder's unpublished letters, handwritten annotations in the margins of the book, and other illuminating documentary material.

In 1962 and 1963, Thornton Wilder spent twenty months in hibernation, away from family and friends, in the Rio Grande border town of Douglas, Arizona. While there, he launched The Eighth Day, a tale set in a mining town in southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim's wife and children. At once a murder mystery and a philosophical story, The Eighth Day is a 'suspenseful and deeply moving' (New York Times) work of classic stature that has been hailed as a great American epic.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Monument Fiction
In The Eight Day, Thorton Wilder tackles life's great question: is there a design to existence, or is it all an accident? Is there some structure to the cosmos and the human place within it, or is it some universal happenstance? Wilder, near the end, seems to come down on the side of design with the ruminations of the old Indian leader of the "cult" above Coaltown. But he seems unable to hold this vision. On page 145 one character ruminates: "Life affords no second chances... Is this what growing older is - seeing always more clearly the things we failed to see?" And this gem later on: "His parents were both forty when he was ten - that is to say they were beginning to be resigned to the knowledge that life was disappointing and basically meaningless." No matter how hard a person holds onto the desire for order, the pull toward disorder is stronger. Wilder creates a novel with characters of a type, etched ... Read More

Rating:

- Close contender for "The Great American Novel"
Majestic! Wilder came closer than most to writing The Great American Novel. "The Eighth Day" appears to be the template for the novels of John Irving.

Rating:

- The Eighth Day

Set in a dismal Illinois coal town around the turn of the twentieth century, resident John Ashley is accused of killing Breckenridge Lansing, the money-grubbing, incompetent owner of the coal mine; he is found guilty and sentenced to be executed. But on his way to prison, he is suddenly rescued by six unidentified men and set free. He makes his way to Chile, puts his engineering background and love of mathematics to good use, and eventually makes his way back to the US. Ashley becomes a "man of faith," that faith being defined as a belief in a better, more caring, American community. (A new beginning = the Eighth Day.) One character says, "The [human] race is undergoing its education. What is education? It is the bridge man crosses from the self-enclosed, self-favoring life into a consciousness of the entire community of mankind." The "heroes" of the novel are those who defy the conventions that would keep ... Read More

Rating:

- Midwestern fables
There is a poor John mine is southern Illinois in Coaltown. The mine mechanic is charged with and convicted of the murder of the general manager. The two leading families in the town had been those of the general manager and the mine mechanic. The better man of the two was the mechanic. He had worked with the manager and had given him credit for things he accomplished.

The mechanic is sentenced to death but escapes through the work of an unknown group of men. One of the daughters decides that in order to carry on she and her family must run a boarding house. At the time people feared being relegated to the poor house.

The hopeful find nourishment in marvels. Eventually John Ashley, the condemned man, makes his way to Chile to work in the copper mines. The root of avarice is the fear of what circumstances might bring. Ashley had tried to live in a manner opposite that of his father ... Read More

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