Saturday Rave: Thornton Wilder's literature.

A couple of weeks ago The Word Den featured the American President Woodrow Wilson talking about government.

Surprisingly, he seemed on the whole to be against it.

Here's another American, though not a politician. This is Thornton Wilder:



Wilder was a playwright and novelist.

And what was Wilder against?

Literature.

Yes, really, literature. I know he was a playwright and a novelist and all that, but he didn't seem to think much of what he was doing.

Literature, he said, is the orchestration of platitudes.

I must admit never to have read or seen anything else of Thornton Wilder's stuff - and I can't honestly say I feel encouraged to do so, now, either, even though he won three Pulitzer Prizes.

Still, literature is the orchestration of platitudes is an excellent, if rather worrying, line.

Word To Use Today: literature. This word comes from the Latin litterātūra, writing. The Latin littera means letter of the alphabet.