Because of their folksy storytelling and economic presentation, some of Wilder's works became instant American classics. Our Town and The Bridge of San Luis Rey have joined the canon of high school reading lists.

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Although Wilder's plays were considered experimental in their staging and his works often reflect the influence of avant-garde writers and thinkers, his art is packaged with a down-to-earth wholesomeness designed to appeal to middle-class American audiences.

Still, it is a mistake to think that Wilder's works are complacent or unchallenging; he always nudged the American values he depicted with provocative afterthoughts.

"The chief thing to remember about conventions is that they are soothing," Wilder observes in his essay, "American Characteristics"(1950). Behind a mask of soothing conventionality, Wilder hid deliberate suggestions of a dark side.

For example, his one-act-play "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden" (1931) purports to be a merry family car outing. But the "journey" turns out to be anything but a "happy" one because the family is visiting an older married daughter who has just given birth to a stillborn baby.

Homosexual Traces

Wilder's plays and novels contain no explicit gay themes. Nor is there substantial gay subtext to decode. His sexuality was so well-closeted that it is scarcely hinted at even "between-the-lines."

It could be speculated that the character of Simon Stimson in Our Town is Wilder's poignant portrayal of a man whose sensitivities and sexuality have been stifled by the enforced conformity of a small town. Stimson is the town drunk and organist for the Congregational Church. The character commits suicide, suggesting that his is the tragedy of a closeted gay man.

The title character in Wilder's last novel Theophilus North (1973) is an older bachelor artist in Newport, Rhode Island. His genteel position as a tutor from the outside world makes him privy to the personal problems of many of the town's elite. Like Wilder's first novel, The Cabala, Theophilus North is an anthology of various characters' stories. North finds himself acting as a pivotal player and advisor to their lives and may reflect Wilder's own experience as a tutor in Newport when he was a young man.

Conclusion

Thornton Wilder died on December 7, 1975. His many honors, in addition to three Pulitzer Prizes, included the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1952), the first Presidential Medal of Freedom (1962), and the National Book Committee's Medal for Literature (1968).

In Wilder's public and personal life, the "love that dared not speak its name" usually remained unspoken. Nevertheless, this devoted acolyte of art spoke volumes about the redeeming power of understanding, hope, and love in all its forms. One can only wonder whether he might have addressed more explicitly the question of homosexuality (and its repression) had he lived in a more tolerant time or place.

Although largely invisible to the general public, a large body of twentieth-century gay male literature by American authors was published prior to Stonewall, some of it positive but most of it tinged with misery or bleakness as the price of being published and disseminated.

Most gay, lesbian, and bisexual American writers who adhered to Marxist-oriented parties and social movements between 1917 and the 1960s strove to hide their sexual orientation, and some even depicted homosexuals negatively in their fiction and drama.

The contemporary literary awards given specifically to honor glbtq books may be seen as an outgrowth of the modern American gay rights movement, so intertwined are they with the movement for equality.

Since Stonewall, gay and lesbian drama has flourished, especially in the United States.

Despite the widespread homophobia in the Modernist movement, several of its practitioners were homosexual; some of them wrote openly about homosexuality, and the groundwork was laid for the gay liberation movement.

Off and on over two centuries, New York City has also reigned as the capital of homosexual, transgender, and queer life in America.

Although Tallulah Bankhead is today remembered mostly as an irreverent wit and volcanic life force, she was also one of the most significant actresses of her time.

One of the most powerful men of the ancient world, Julius Caesar was frequently reminded, sometimes derisively, of his youthful sexual affair with the king of Bithynia.

One of America's premier literary artists in the earlier twentieth century, Willa Cather reflected her own lesbianism in the creation of strong women characters and in the exploration of male homosexuality.

The works of award-winning Canadian novelist and playwright Timothy Findley examine the nature of power in society and the struggle to understand and achieve what is right.

Ernest Hemingway, himself sexually insecure, included negative, even abusive portrayals of gay men in his fiction.

A proponent of the "diva musical," Broadway composer and lyricist Jerry Herman made homosexuality the undisguised subject of La Cage aux Folles but he did so just as gay culture lost its need of a diva to voice its concerns.

Though closeted, Henry James had a number of intimate relations with young men, and his sexual orientation imbued his fiction.

Marcel Proust is the author of A la recherche du temps perdu, one of the major achievements of Modernism and a great gay novel.

Director José Quintero made a significant contribution to theater by reviving interest in the works of Eugene O'Neill.

In addition to becoming--with Alice B. Toklas--half of an iconic lesbian couple, Gertrude Stein was an important innovator and transformer of the English language.

Oscar Wilde is important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness.