Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder

 

Book: Theophilus North

(1973)

Author: Thornton Wilder

(Our Town, The Bridge Over San Luis Rey)

Price: $15 shipping included

If I start with any book for this project, it serves that it should be my favorite. I found this book originally at a small bookstore along the main avenue in Manasquan New Jersey. I spent that Summer living on The Shore, making tacos, flipping burgers, on the beach and logging miles on an old Huffy Mountain Bike for romance at $8 an hour and a few free beers.

Theophilus North is the story of a school teacher who leaves behind his job in New Jersey and moves into the old Naval town of Newport, Rhode Island in 1926. There he submerges himself in the famed 7 Cities of Newport taking on odd jobs and becoming the man about town. It's trite to call the book timeless but it has grand sensibilities of Victorian Romance while relating to the writings of The Lost Generation as well. Which at the time was one of the arguments about Wilder's writing. Throughout his career his writing style shifted and was easily influenced by relationships with great writers like Gertrude Stein and  James Joyce.

This novel changed how I wanted to live. Page by page it defined how I would come to feel about leaving things behind to chase fleeting passion, building the courage to talk to as many strangers as possible, what a constellation should be, and learned what makes a member of a community.  

Along with the book I will insert a poem I have written (one of many) influenced by this novel, as well as my unfinished effort at Thornton Wilder type prose called "Julian Jail"