Talk:Thornton Wilder
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Wilder's mother's maiden name was "Niven" along with it being his middle name as well. One can't help wondering whether or not he was related to his contemporary the ultra-famous film actor, raconteur and writer in his own right David Niven. Racing Forward (talk) 23:52, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Was Hello, Dolly based on The Matchmaker, or was it based on The Merchant of Yonkers? Dpbsmith (talk) 13:35, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
[[Category:Wisconsin writers|Wilder, Thornton
Looking at his Wiki biography and another one, I don't see any evidence that Wilder spent significant time in Wisconsin after he left to go to boarding school. "People from Wisconsin" is accurate, but I don't think he can be called a "Wisconsin writer". Is there any other information about his time in Wisconsin? Cheers, -Willmcw 22:14, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
An anon changed "China" to "Asia" in the sentence:
I'm reverting it, because he did grow in China. For example, "Thornton Wilder had firsthand experience of China in the early 1910s when his father was appointed American consul in Shanghai." I can't figure out what the anon had in mind, unless he thinks "Asia" is a politically-correct synonym for China. Now, one could change that to say he spent his childhood in "the Earth, the Solar System, the Universe, the Mind of God..." Dpbsmith (talk) 00:30, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I just cleaned this article up, after someone changed the titles of Wilder's plays to "A Day in the Life of a Dead Homo" and other such bigoted tripe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MightyLeaf (talk • contribs) 19:48, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
"Wilder was active in many student groups: T.B.I.Y.T.B." I tried to find a reference to this but wasn't successful, although it is mentioned in the Yale Press. Is it one group? Several? What does it do? Lordknave (talk) 20:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Their is no doubt about the subject treatment in Wilder's plays as having been influenced by Existentialism, and apparently Sarte is who interested him in Existentialism. Wilder certainly didn't buy Sarte's brand of atheism as anyone who reads his plays will see. However to state that Wilder understood atheism as an essential part of existentialism is too much to assert. After all Sarte was a communist; does that mean that existentrialism is defined by communisim? Certainly not. Existentialism precedes and is much too wide in scope to encompass any particular theology including atheism. That was simply Sarte's choice and belief; it is not a tenet of Existentialism. In fact Camus and Nietsche [among others such as Kant and Dovstovesky]] helped define Existentialism so that such narrow focus as is implied in the statement in this article would never be characterisitic of Existentialism. 75.85.42.184 (talk) 07:49, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
This article has been reverted by a bot to this version as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) This has been done to remove User:Accotink2's contributions as they have a history of extensive copyright violation and so it is assumed that all of their major contributions are copyright violations. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. VWBot (talk) 13:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
There seems to be a properly-sourced statement, under "Personal Life," about Wilder as having been homosexual. If correct, this seems like a salient piece of biographical information. It's always the work that's most important, but usually biography is considered a legitimate part of an encyclopedia article about an author. It seems just as important as many other facts. To appreciate Wilder's work, is it necessary to know how the man looked? Is the fact that he grew up in China directly relevant to an understanding of Our Town? Does the fact that he taught French in a prep school connect in any way with Heaven's Our Destination? No. But when we are interested in an author's work, we are often interested in the author himself. Sexual orientation strikes almost as close to the core of identity as gender itself. It seems to me that we should no more suppress information on Wilder's sexuality than we would on George Eliot's sex.
Of course if the information isn't properly sourced we should remove it. And if there is Wikipedia policy that says that homosexuality should not be mentioned in biographies unless the author self-identified as homosexual we should respect that policy. Is there such a policy?
And if there is a policy that says that nothing should be mentioned in an author's biography unless a source can be cited showing a direct connection between the biographical fact and the author's work, we should respect it. Is there such a policy?
The information should probably be integrated into the rest of the biography rather than broken out into a separate section. Dpbsmith (talk) 03:28, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't doubt that Wilder was gay, but I have not seen any source that he identified himself as gay. If Wikipedia is going to say he was, we need strong sources for that. Let's discuss that here. Jonathunder (talk) 15:38, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
For a dead person, there must be a verified consensus of reliable published sources that the description is appropriate. Historically, LGBT people often did not come out in the way that they commonly do today, so a person's own self-identification is, in many cases, impossible to verify by the same standards that would be applicable to a contemporary BLP. For a dead person, a broad consensus of academic and/or biographical scholarship about the topic is sufficient to describe a person as LGBT. For example, while some sources have claimed that William Shakespeare was gay or bisexual, there is not a sufficient consensus among scholars to support categorizing him as such — but no such doubt exists about the sexuality of Oscar Wilde or Radclyffe Hall.
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