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Mr. Bridge & Mrs. Bridge #2
Mr. Bridge
Walter Bridge is an ambitious lawyer who redoubles his efforts and time at the office whenever he senses that his family needs something, even when what they need is more of him and less of his money. Affluence, material assets, and comforts create a cocoon of community respectability that cloaks the void within - not the skeleton in the closet but a black hole swallowing the whole household.
367 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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2924 people want to read
About the author
Evan S. Connell
58 books152 followersEvan Shelby Connell Jr. (August 17, 1924 – January 10, 2013) was a U.S. novelist, poet, and short-story writer. His writing covered a variety of genres, although he published most frequently in fiction.
In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."
Connell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only son of Evan S. Connell, Sr. (1890–1974), a physician, and Ruth Elton Connell. He had a sister Barbara (Mrs. Matthew Zimmermann) to whom he dedicated his novel Mrs. Bridge (1959). He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but joined the Navy in 1943 and became a pilot. After the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. in English. He studied creative writing at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California. He never married, and lived and worked in Sausalito, California for decades.
(Wikipedia)
In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."
Connell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only son of Evan S. Connell, Sr. (1890–1974), a physician, and Ruth Elton Connell. He had a sister Barbara (Mrs. Matthew Zimmermann) to whom he dedicated his novel Mrs. Bridge (1959). He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but joined the Navy in 1943 and became a pilot. After the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. in English. He studied creative writing at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California. He never married, and lived and worked in Sausalito, California for decades.
(Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 347 reviews
January 22, 2018
Another masterpiece of pointillist fiction, this companion novel to Mrs. Bridge tells the story of the Bridge family from the husband's perspective. Told in snippets and short scenes, like Mrs. Bridge, it excavates the human being behind his conventions, or rather asks how much the person has merged into his own conventionality. The truth isn't always pretty, but the prose certainly is. It's direct, clear, supple, and utterly propulsive. I found myself swept along, even when what was being described was banal or worse. It's quite a feat.
April 5, 2022
4,5★
“’Stick ‘em up!’
. . .
Coming toward him was a red-eyed, unshaven man with one hand thrust into the slit pocket of a shabby trench coat.
Mr. Bridge said impatiently: ‘What is it you want?’
‘Give me your money,’ the man said in hoarse voice, and he made a threatening gesture.
‘Don't be ridiculous,’ said Mr. Bridge, and walked away. While driving home he contemplated the incident.
. . .
The man's presumption was extraordinary. If he had no money he should get a job like everybody else.”
Mr Bridge, Walter, doesn’t think like everybody else, but he believes everybody else should think the way he does. If they did, the world would be a better place.
I enjoyed the gentle, poignant humour of Mrs. Bridge , written in 1959, ten years earlier than this companion piece. Read her book first. My review of that is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
This was written in 1969, in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, as the musical “Hair” identified the era. It's possible the author shows us a different side of the Bridges from his more modern vantage point. The story actually takes place between the two World Wars, and we see Mr. Bridge laying down the law as to proper behaviour, what is expected of men and women and children and business and society and and and.
There is no question that he is a hard, or at least long, worker, spending hours at the office with his faithful assistant, Julia, and in his study at home, where the family is nervous about disturbing him. Surprisingly, he does sometimes sit in there wishing they would, but he has no way of letting them know.
At one point, he seriously considers explaining something about an interesting business case to the rest of the family but talks himself out of it.
“None of this would make sense at the dinner table. They might listen, but it would be a strain.
No. No, he thought, as he peered into his glass, there is almost nothing I can say to them. My life is cut in half. The halves remain side by side in perfect equilibrium like halves of a melon. I suppose the same is true of most men. Or are they somehow unlike me? Are they able to share themselves?”
He has no idea what other men think and do, but he’s pretty sure of what’s important to him. Mostly it’s business, but not always. He has times when he sits out with the family, reading his paper or listening to his favourite music. Often idle family chatter is going on around him.
“Mr. Bridge discovered that he could not read any more, though he continued holding the paper. He listened to his daughters and his wife and he observed his son, but he no longer understood what was being said; as he listened to their voices and to the seasonal music of the insects the problems which had troubled him during the day did not seem important, and he reflected that he had practically everything he ever wanted.”
See? He’s a nice guy. And sometimes he is. He is by turns solicitous of his wife and her happiness, but he’s sometimes exasperated by her innocence and naivety. She really has never “been there and done that”. Then again, he uses it to his advantage. It’s easy for him to boss her around. He assumes she trusts he’s right. (She doesn’t always, incidentally - read Mrs. Bridge first. It's the better book anyway.)
He puts his foot down and doesn’t like anyone who isn’t from a white, middle-class, church-going family. He’s happy to do business with other people, but he doesn’t want to associate with them except as servants or staff. When teen son Douglas is seen associating regularly with a teen waitress from their country club, Mr Bridge calls him in for a discussion.
“Where did she live? In a big apartment building near Menorah Hospital. Her mother worked at Menorah, he thought.
Menorah? Was this girl a Jewess?
Douglas didn't know.
He had never thought about it. He guessed she might be Irish.
What was her name?
Peggy O'Hara.”
There is a time when Walter accidentally voices aloud a thought he has been secretly harbouring, that Hitler has some good ideas about Jews. Even his mild-mannered wife is more progressive in her thinking than he is, as are the kids, of course.
Despite his comment about being happy reading his paper, he seems happiest when he visits the vault in his bank to look at his securities. He takes great pride and pleasure in amassing investments to ensure a comfortable future. He’s a bit of a Midas in that regard.
Having said that, and being no admirer of Walter Bridge, I can understand him. Here’s a man who’s lived through the Great War and the Depression and loathes the Roosevelt administration whose New Deal gives away “his” hard-earned money to the undeserving (“get a job”).
I have always liked the saying: “It’s a reason, but it’s no excuse.” I may understand why people think the way they do or even behave the way they do, but it’s not an excuse for their behaviour.
Mr. Bridge could give you lots of reasons, but I don’t think any of them excuse him. This is a terrific portrait of the man Mrs. Bridge loved and lived with for so many years. I did, often, want to bop him on the head, because I recognised him so well.
Connell gives him quite a dark side, too, which is extremely well hidden from everyone. It comes as a surprise when it suddenly erupts here and there. Their trip overseas was a real eye-opener for both of the Bridges. It's a good read, but read about the Missus first!
“’Stick ‘em up!’
. . .
Coming toward him was a red-eyed, unshaven man with one hand thrust into the slit pocket of a shabby trench coat.
Mr. Bridge said impatiently: ‘What is it you want?’
‘Give me your money,’ the man said in hoarse voice, and he made a threatening gesture.
‘Don't be ridiculous,’ said Mr. Bridge, and walked away. While driving home he contemplated the incident.
. . .
The man's presumption was extraordinary. If he had no money he should get a job like everybody else.”
Mr Bridge, Walter, doesn’t think like everybody else, but he believes everybody else should think the way he does. If they did, the world would be a better place.
I enjoyed the gentle, poignant humour of Mrs. Bridge , written in 1959, ten years earlier than this companion piece. Read her book first. My review of that is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
This was written in 1969, in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, as the musical “Hair” identified the era. It's possible the author shows us a different side of the Bridges from his more modern vantage point. The story actually takes place between the two World Wars, and we see Mr. Bridge laying down the law as to proper behaviour, what is expected of men and women and children and business and society and and and.
There is no question that he is a hard, or at least long, worker, spending hours at the office with his faithful assistant, Julia, and in his study at home, where the family is nervous about disturbing him. Surprisingly, he does sometimes sit in there wishing they would, but he has no way of letting them know.
At one point, he seriously considers explaining something about an interesting business case to the rest of the family but talks himself out of it.
“None of this would make sense at the dinner table. They might listen, but it would be a strain.
No. No, he thought, as he peered into his glass, there is almost nothing I can say to them. My life is cut in half. The halves remain side by side in perfect equilibrium like halves of a melon. I suppose the same is true of most men. Or are they somehow unlike me? Are they able to share themselves?”
He has no idea what other men think and do, but he’s pretty sure of what’s important to him. Mostly it’s business, but not always. He has times when he sits out with the family, reading his paper or listening to his favourite music. Often idle family chatter is going on around him.
“Mr. Bridge discovered that he could not read any more, though he continued holding the paper. He listened to his daughters and his wife and he observed his son, but he no longer understood what was being said; as he listened to their voices and to the seasonal music of the insects the problems which had troubled him during the day did not seem important, and he reflected that he had practically everything he ever wanted.”
See? He’s a nice guy. And sometimes he is. He is by turns solicitous of his wife and her happiness, but he’s sometimes exasperated by her innocence and naivety. She really has never “been there and done that”. Then again, he uses it to his advantage. It’s easy for him to boss her around. He assumes she trusts he’s right. (She doesn’t always, incidentally - read Mrs. Bridge first. It's the better book anyway.)
He puts his foot down and doesn’t like anyone who isn’t from a white, middle-class, church-going family. He’s happy to do business with other people, but he doesn’t want to associate with them except as servants or staff. When teen son Douglas is seen associating regularly with a teen waitress from their country club, Mr Bridge calls him in for a discussion.
“Where did she live? In a big apartment building near Menorah Hospital. Her mother worked at Menorah, he thought.
Menorah? Was this girl a Jewess?
Douglas didn't know.
He had never thought about it. He guessed she might be Irish.
What was her name?
Peggy O'Hara.”
There is a time when Walter accidentally voices aloud a thought he has been secretly harbouring, that Hitler has some good ideas about Jews. Even his mild-mannered wife is more progressive in her thinking than he is, as are the kids, of course.
Despite his comment about being happy reading his paper, he seems happiest when he visits the vault in his bank to look at his securities. He takes great pride and pleasure in amassing investments to ensure a comfortable future. He’s a bit of a Midas in that regard.
Having said that, and being no admirer of Walter Bridge, I can understand him. Here’s a man who’s lived through the Great War and the Depression and loathes the Roosevelt administration whose New Deal gives away “his” hard-earned money to the undeserving (“get a job”).
I have always liked the saying: “It’s a reason, but it’s no excuse.” I may understand why people think the way they do or even behave the way they do, but it’s not an excuse for their behaviour.
Mr. Bridge could give you lots of reasons, but I don’t think any of them excuse him. This is a terrific portrait of the man Mrs. Bridge loved and lived with for so many years. I did, often, want to bop him on the head, because I recognised him so well.
Connell gives him quite a dark side, too, which is extremely well hidden from everyone. It comes as a surprise when it suddenly erupts here and there. Their trip overseas was a real eye-opener for both of the Bridges. It's a good read, but read about the Missus first!
March 10, 2019
Glimpses of the underpinnings of everyday life of one Mr. Bridge, a wealthy attorney in Kansas City circa 1930. Told in vignette form, his prides and his prejudices are shown. His life is neatly halved, work and family. He sees no reason why the two should mingle. His wife is sheltered, naive, and repressed. Mr. Bridge is a man who values precision, who is easily annoyed, and more than a little self righteous. Keeping up appearances is all important.
This book is the counterpart to the novel entitled Mrs. Bridge, penned 10 years prior to this one. Both finely written, the author shines in his ability to keep the reader's interest without resorting to anything other than simple prose that is close to perfection.
This book is the counterpart to the novel entitled Mrs. Bridge, penned 10 years prior to this one. Both finely written, the author shines in his ability to keep the reader's interest without resorting to anything other than simple prose that is close to perfection.
July 3, 2025
There’s a lot more racial tension and white paranoia in Mr. Bridge than in Mrs. Perhaps due to the 60s — between Mrs. (1959) and Mr. (1969) there intervened a decade of national Civil Rights struggle and Black Power posturing. Not that Connell is suddenly cartoonish or emphatic in the sequel. He isn’t Updike, whose first two Rabbit novels are separated by a similar span (1961 and 1971); in Rabbit Redux a black Vietnam vet, Skeeter, moves in, gets Rabbit high and remedially schools him on the black experience of these “Benighted States of America.” No, in this novel Connell remains a droll deity arranging hundreds of one- and two-page “chapterlets” of poker-faced prose, making a mosaic of those moments in which nothing really happens but much is glimpsed.
In this quiet way Connell exposes the Negrophobia and Jew-loathing implicit in the first novel. Walter Bridge, a prosperous Kansas City attorney, feels a panicky unease after being told that his black maid’s nephew plans to apply to Harvard. When his upset wife shows him an article on a lynching, he asks her “What was this fellow doing that he shouldn’t have been doing?” and insists that the Southerners he knows are the most courteous and hospitable of people. He reviles Roosevelt as a socialist, thinks Communism a plot by upstart Jews to expropriate arduously accumulated WASP fortunes, and secretly approves of what he sees as Hitler’s attempt to limit Jewish influence; at the outbreak of WWII, he concludes Hitler is insane—“and this was unfortunate because some of his ideas were sensible.” Oh, he lusts after his eldest daughter, Ruth, a languorous, moody, vaguely arty wannabee actress who is watched sunbathing or “stretched out like leopard in front of the phonograph” while Mozart and Wagner spill over her. Ruth escapes to New York, presumably to become one of the “well-brought-up” refugees from WASPdom that the passing-for-white Anatole Broyard balled by the hundreds during his Greenwich Village years.
A real piece of work, right? A sick fuck, even. Yet Mr. Bridge is a rich and fascinating creation. (Connell must like the challenge of repellant characters; the novel he published between the Bridges is called The Diary of a Rapist.) Mr. Bridge is partly based on Connell’s father and made me think tenderly of my own. I laugh writing that. When his other daughter Carolyn’s sorority accepts a black pledge, Mr. Bridge fumes about this “troublemaker”; my dad was just such a troublemaker, he and his older brother the first blacks to live on campus at a Bible college in rural Arkansas in the mid 1960s. At one point they had to stare down and shame the college president, who disagreed with the trustees’ decision and who, until confronted by my dad and uncle, defiantly and publicly referred to them as “our n——s.” (I hate to use the censor’s dash, but the review would get flagged otherwise.)
That said, Mr. Bridge is, in some ways, the kind of man my dad was raised to be: reticent, guarded, and rigorously compartmentalized. Bridge excludes emotions and memories from his mature persona. The aspects of his personality not germane to the roles of breadwinner and patriarch remain opaque to his family, and largely so to himself. (The only conscious poetry in the man is the thought of how well his family will be taken care of should he suddenly die; a repeated, resonant image is his reverie of the safe deposit box, induced as he handles savings bonds and stock certificates in the tomb-like hush of a bank vault.) It is very droll of Connell never to pinpoint Mr. Bridge’s age; we only know that he is no longer a boy, as he is ready to remind anyone who would force him to emote or reminisce. In a recent memoir Edmund White remembers his father’s peers in 1940s Cincinnati by their large and well-cared-for hats, by their “plain lace-up shoes and double-breasted suits and heavy overcoats,” “uniforms [that] elevated and concealed them in an ageless anonymity—from twenty to fifty they were men, nothing more or less.” The most lyrical passages of this very muted book come when Mr. Bridge is overtaken by images from youth, or when the prosaic patriarch lets slip some stunning story. Twelve-year-old Douglas Bridge is entranced by movie ace Errol Flynn in Dawn Patrol and asks his father to fund flying lessons; Mr. Bridge refuses, and to illustrate the danger of flying dryly cites one of his experiences in WWI. Douglas is disappointed by the refusal, then dumbstruck by the revelation—just as I was dumbstruck when I learned that my dad faced down some ol’ cracker on a Southern campus. You learn a parent in fragments.
Mr. Bridge made me want to re-read Connell’s Little Big Horn excavation, Son of the Morning Star (1984). James Baldwin said that “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it”—but he said that twenty years before Connell got a hold of Custer. Son of the Morning Star shares the accretive, anecdotal style of the Bridge novels; the digressions extend and interlace to form something incredibly vast—no less than “the American character as revealed by the struggle for the Great Plains,” judged one critic.
And I wonder if in Custer Connell found a thematic ancestor of Mr. Bridge. Of course, Custer fought to make the Great Plains habitable for future Mr. Bridges. But more deeply, each man is at once a stereotype and a paradox, representative and deeply bizarre. Custer is a caricature of belligerent white male arrogance and a perfect sentimentalist, weepy, high-strung, and theatrical. If Mr. Bridge is the quintessence of stolid Great Plains conservatism, of the walnut-paneled interwar Midwest, all gray flannel and municipal bonds, he is also a latent daredevil, never more serene or clear-headed than when chance crises (a stormy transatlantic crossing, a tornado touching down at his country club) disrupt or invigorate his self-imposed bourgeois routine. Custer’s Civil War exploits as a relentless Union commander (it was his cavalry division that grabbed Lee like a police dog and held him until the rest of Grant’s army could catch up) who also happened to revile blacks and admire prewar Southern society exposes the contradictions of the Northern war effort and foreshadows the racist reconciliation of North and South, of which Mr. Bridge’s lynching comments are an expression (Mr. Bridge is fond of quoting Lincoln—but his folksy maxims of self-improvement, not his soaring civic poetry; Lincoln the canny Illinois attorney is powerfully vivid to Mr. Bridge; Lincoln the Great Emancipator? The renovator of American democracy? Not so much). And Custer is no less paradoxical as an Indian-fighter—committed to destroying the way of life of the Plains tribes while romantically entranced by that way of life. Mrs. Custer had been the darling of Washington society during the Civil War, and he had powerful political backers in the east—yet he chose to remain a rather poorly-paid regular army officer on the rustic fringes of the civilization he was helping to spread. Galloping hundreds of miles across plains; hunting buffalo from horseback; teaching himself taxidermy on campaign; sleeping in the souvenir teepee he took from a Cheyenne village just before he burned it…there’s a lot of Custer in his admirer Teddy Roosevelt’s anxious fin-de-siècle program for the reinvigoration of American males, in which the white sportsman, in tailored buckskin, eludes the femininizing creep of modern civilization by temporarily (re)incarnating the Indian warrior’s stoicism and self-reliance. The ever-subtle and ambiguous Connell is as far from Roosevelt’s squeaky-voiced warnings of “over-civilization” and rhapsodies of the “Strenuous Life” as any writer can be; a shirtless drum circle of other married guys is the last thing Walter Bridge wants, or needs; but Douglas Bridge does deserve to be studied as one of the canonical contests of violent boyhood and fussy female gentility. The page and a half Connell devotes to the Bridges' contrasting reactions to Douglas’s killing of a squirrel with his bb gun is an X-ray of the gender themes and power tensions of this American family.
And so ends my review, rambling and half-baked where Connell’s novel is stealthy and controlled. Read him! He's a ninja.
(Props to Counterpoint for keeping the Bridge novels in print, but in cover design they lose to North Point. Old Puritan headstones are exactly what India and Walter demand.)
In this quiet way Connell exposes the Negrophobia and Jew-loathing implicit in the first novel. Walter Bridge, a prosperous Kansas City attorney, feels a panicky unease after being told that his black maid’s nephew plans to apply to Harvard. When his upset wife shows him an article on a lynching, he asks her “What was this fellow doing that he shouldn’t have been doing?” and insists that the Southerners he knows are the most courteous and hospitable of people. He reviles Roosevelt as a socialist, thinks Communism a plot by upstart Jews to expropriate arduously accumulated WASP fortunes, and secretly approves of what he sees as Hitler’s attempt to limit Jewish influence; at the outbreak of WWII, he concludes Hitler is insane—“and this was unfortunate because some of his ideas were sensible.” Oh, he lusts after his eldest daughter, Ruth, a languorous, moody, vaguely arty wannabee actress who is watched sunbathing or “stretched out like leopard in front of the phonograph” while Mozart and Wagner spill over her. Ruth escapes to New York, presumably to become one of the “well-brought-up” refugees from WASPdom that the passing-for-white Anatole Broyard balled by the hundreds during his Greenwich Village years.
A real piece of work, right? A sick fuck, even. Yet Mr. Bridge is a rich and fascinating creation. (Connell must like the challenge of repellant characters; the novel he published between the Bridges is called The Diary of a Rapist.) Mr. Bridge is partly based on Connell’s father and made me think tenderly of my own. I laugh writing that. When his other daughter Carolyn’s sorority accepts a black pledge, Mr. Bridge fumes about this “troublemaker”; my dad was just such a troublemaker, he and his older brother the first blacks to live on campus at a Bible college in rural Arkansas in the mid 1960s. At one point they had to stare down and shame the college president, who disagreed with the trustees’ decision and who, until confronted by my dad and uncle, defiantly and publicly referred to them as “our n——s.” (I hate to use the censor’s dash, but the review would get flagged otherwise.)
That said, Mr. Bridge is, in some ways, the kind of man my dad was raised to be: reticent, guarded, and rigorously compartmentalized. Bridge excludes emotions and memories from his mature persona. The aspects of his personality not germane to the roles of breadwinner and patriarch remain opaque to his family, and largely so to himself. (The only conscious poetry in the man is the thought of how well his family will be taken care of should he suddenly die; a repeated, resonant image is his reverie of the safe deposit box, induced as he handles savings bonds and stock certificates in the tomb-like hush of a bank vault.) It is very droll of Connell never to pinpoint Mr. Bridge’s age; we only know that he is no longer a boy, as he is ready to remind anyone who would force him to emote or reminisce. In a recent memoir Edmund White remembers his father’s peers in 1940s Cincinnati by their large and well-cared-for hats, by their “plain lace-up shoes and double-breasted suits and heavy overcoats,” “uniforms [that] elevated and concealed them in an ageless anonymity—from twenty to fifty they were men, nothing more or less.” The most lyrical passages of this very muted book come when Mr. Bridge is overtaken by images from youth, or when the prosaic patriarch lets slip some stunning story. Twelve-year-old Douglas Bridge is entranced by movie ace Errol Flynn in Dawn Patrol and asks his father to fund flying lessons; Mr. Bridge refuses, and to illustrate the danger of flying dryly cites one of his experiences in WWI. Douglas is disappointed by the refusal, then dumbstruck by the revelation—just as I was dumbstruck when I learned that my dad faced down some ol’ cracker on a Southern campus. You learn a parent in fragments.
Mr. Bridge made me want to re-read Connell’s Little Big Horn excavation, Son of the Morning Star (1984). James Baldwin said that “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it”—but he said that twenty years before Connell got a hold of Custer. Son of the Morning Star shares the accretive, anecdotal style of the Bridge novels; the digressions extend and interlace to form something incredibly vast—no less than “the American character as revealed by the struggle for the Great Plains,” judged one critic.
And I wonder if in Custer Connell found a thematic ancestor of Mr. Bridge. Of course, Custer fought to make the Great Plains habitable for future Mr. Bridges. But more deeply, each man is at once a stereotype and a paradox, representative and deeply bizarre. Custer is a caricature of belligerent white male arrogance and a perfect sentimentalist, weepy, high-strung, and theatrical. If Mr. Bridge is the quintessence of stolid Great Plains conservatism, of the walnut-paneled interwar Midwest, all gray flannel and municipal bonds, he is also a latent daredevil, never more serene or clear-headed than when chance crises (a stormy transatlantic crossing, a tornado touching down at his country club) disrupt or invigorate his self-imposed bourgeois routine. Custer’s Civil War exploits as a relentless Union commander (it was his cavalry division that grabbed Lee like a police dog and held him until the rest of Grant’s army could catch up) who also happened to revile blacks and admire prewar Southern society exposes the contradictions of the Northern war effort and foreshadows the racist reconciliation of North and South, of which Mr. Bridge’s lynching comments are an expression (Mr. Bridge is fond of quoting Lincoln—but his folksy maxims of self-improvement, not his soaring civic poetry; Lincoln the canny Illinois attorney is powerfully vivid to Mr. Bridge; Lincoln the Great Emancipator? The renovator of American democracy? Not so much). And Custer is no less paradoxical as an Indian-fighter—committed to destroying the way of life of the Plains tribes while romantically entranced by that way of life. Mrs. Custer had been the darling of Washington society during the Civil War, and he had powerful political backers in the east—yet he chose to remain a rather poorly-paid regular army officer on the rustic fringes of the civilization he was helping to spread. Galloping hundreds of miles across plains; hunting buffalo from horseback; teaching himself taxidermy on campaign; sleeping in the souvenir teepee he took from a Cheyenne village just before he burned it…there’s a lot of Custer in his admirer Teddy Roosevelt’s anxious fin-de-siècle program for the reinvigoration of American males, in which the white sportsman, in tailored buckskin, eludes the femininizing creep of modern civilization by temporarily (re)incarnating the Indian warrior’s stoicism and self-reliance. The ever-subtle and ambiguous Connell is as far from Roosevelt’s squeaky-voiced warnings of “over-civilization” and rhapsodies of the “Strenuous Life” as any writer can be; a shirtless drum circle of other married guys is the last thing Walter Bridge wants, or needs; but Douglas Bridge does deserve to be studied as one of the canonical contests of violent boyhood and fussy female gentility. The page and a half Connell devotes to the Bridges' contrasting reactions to Douglas’s killing of a squirrel with his bb gun is an X-ray of the gender themes and power tensions of this American family.
And so ends my review, rambling and half-baked where Connell’s novel is stealthy and controlled. Read him! He's a ninja.
(Props to Counterpoint for keeping the Bridge novels in print, but in cover design they lose to North Point. Old Puritan headstones are exactly what India and Walter demand.)
February 7, 2019
Evan S. Connell's two books Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge should be read together.
Please read first my review of Mrs. Bridge here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I will not repeat what I have said before.
I am glad to have read her book before his. Her book gives a more complete view of the events. Why it is this way is a consequence of how Mrs. Bridge ends. To explain more would be a spoiler. Nevertheless, you must read both to fully understand the family.
The two books are written in the same manner—both have the same marvelous humor, prose style and short chapters.
Both give readers a look into the lives of the Bridge family members—the two parents and their three children. You learn more about the family maid, Harriet, and Mr. Bridge’s secretary in the second book than you do in the first. Both books draw the kids extremely well. To learn about them is reason enough to read the two books. The first book pulls you in and makes you want to know everything that is possible to know about the family. The second book satisfies that need. While the kids are covered well in both books, you understand the parents better having completed the second. I strongly advise against reading only the first book despite that I rated the first book higher.
I love both of these books. I love the manner in which they have been written—how the chapters have been constructed and the prose style. I love their humor and that they are so true to life. What the kids say is what kids do say to their parents. The same is true for the adults. The dialogs are perfect, absolutely perfect.
This is a book focusing on character portrayal. You already know from the first book what will happen. This book makes even more clear Walter’s, India’s, Ruth’s, Caroline’s and Douglas’ personality. I came to care for all of them, except I came to realize that . Nevertheless, I do think this explains why I like his book a little less than hers. Also, the ending is stronger in hers. If characters in a book feel so real that their behavior upsets you, that says the author’s ability to write is exceptional.
The audiobook version of Mr. Bridge has a male narrator—George Guidall. A male narrator is absolutely essential for this book, just as a female narrator (Sally Darling) was essential for Mrs. Bridge. Recorded Books has chosen both wisely. The two fit together. Just as the books should be viewed together, the narrators of the two audiobooks should be too. This is a family, and you must be able to imagine them all together. The kids are done well by both George Guidall and Sally Darling. I have to admit thought that I liked Darling’s narration a teeny bit better than Guidall’s, but each fit their respective character extremely well.
*********************
Mrs. Bridge 5 stars
Mr. Bridge 4 stars
Please read first my review of Mrs. Bridge here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I will not repeat what I have said before.
I am glad to have read her book before his. Her book gives a more complete view of the events. Why it is this way is a consequence of how Mrs. Bridge ends. To explain more would be a spoiler. Nevertheless, you must read both to fully understand the family.
The two books are written in the same manner—both have the same marvelous humor, prose style and short chapters.
Both give readers a look into the lives of the Bridge family members—the two parents and their three children. You learn more about the family maid, Harriet, and Mr. Bridge’s secretary in the second book than you do in the first. Both books draw the kids extremely well. To learn about them is reason enough to read the two books. The first book pulls you in and makes you want to know everything that is possible to know about the family. The second book satisfies that need. While the kids are covered well in both books, you understand the parents better having completed the second. I strongly advise against reading only the first book despite that I rated the first book higher.
I love both of these books. I love the manner in which they have been written—how the chapters have been constructed and the prose style. I love their humor and that they are so true to life. What the kids say is what kids do say to their parents. The same is true for the adults. The dialogs are perfect, absolutely perfect.
This is a book focusing on character portrayal. You already know from the first book what will happen. This book makes even more clear Walter’s, India’s, Ruth’s, Caroline’s and Douglas’ personality. I came to care for all of them, except I came to realize that . Nevertheless, I do think this explains why I like his book a little less than hers. Also, the ending is stronger in hers. If characters in a book feel so real that their behavior upsets you, that says the author’s ability to write is exceptional.
The audiobook version of Mr. Bridge has a male narrator—George Guidall. A male narrator is absolutely essential for this book, just as a female narrator (Sally Darling) was essential for Mrs. Bridge. Recorded Books has chosen both wisely. The two fit together. Just as the books should be viewed together, the narrators of the two audiobooks should be too. This is a family, and you must be able to imagine them all together. The kids are done well by both George Guidall and Sally Darling. I have to admit thought that I liked Darling’s narration a teeny bit better than Guidall’s, but each fit their respective character extremely well.
*********************
Mrs. Bridge 5 stars
Mr. Bridge 4 stars
September 19, 2021
I would have to concur with other reviewers of Mr. Bridge that it is not as good as its companion novel, Mrs. Bridge. It has the same format of many short chapters (141 of them), and this time it is told from Mr. Bridge’s perspective. He mostly talks about interactions with his family, and sometime other people outside of his family — he doesn’t seem to have many friends at all. He’s opinionated. He’s prejudiced against Blacks and Jews.
I was actually ready to bail on this, because it was longer than Mrs. bridge, and I was a bit bored with it rather quickly and oi knew i had a long slog ahead. But I decided to stick with it. Was it worth it? I don’t know…I really cannot heartily recommend this book. I think if you read ‘Mrs. Bridge’, then this is not a necessary accompanying piece to read.
I am not sure why Evan S. Connell, Jr. Felt compelled 10 years after writing ‘Mrs. Bridge’ to write ‘Mr. Bridge’. It’s not like us viewing the world through Mr. Bridge’s eyes we see a vastly different accounting of events that we did not get from Mrs. Bridge. That is only opinion however, because in the third review below (iowa.edu), Brooks Landon says Mr. and Mrs. Bridge see the world through different rose-colored glasses.
Reviews:
• https://literaryfictions.com/2021/04/...
• https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/m...
• https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent....
I was actually ready to bail on this, because it was longer than Mrs. bridge, and I was a bit bored with it rather quickly and oi knew i had a long slog ahead. But I decided to stick with it. Was it worth it? I don’t know…I really cannot heartily recommend this book. I think if you read ‘Mrs. Bridge’, then this is not a necessary accompanying piece to read.
I am not sure why Evan S. Connell, Jr. Felt compelled 10 years after writing ‘Mrs. Bridge’ to write ‘Mr. Bridge’. It’s not like us viewing the world through Mr. Bridge’s eyes we see a vastly different accounting of events that we did not get from Mrs. Bridge. That is only opinion however, because in the third review below (iowa.edu), Brooks Landon says Mr. and Mrs. Bridge see the world through different rose-colored glasses.
Reviews:
• https://literaryfictions.com/2021/04/...
• https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/m...
• https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent....
January 27, 2022
Bien podría titularse 'Historia (o radiografía) de un matrimonio'. Esta obra, junto con Mrs. Bridge, es un díptico escrito por Evan S. Connell en los años 60, que nos ofrece un retrato en profundidad de un matrimonio de clase media acomodada en los Estados Unidos de los años 30, antes de la segunda guerra mundial. Y cuando digo retrato es así, porque es estático, no hay una acción ni una historia, sino una serie de instantáneas muy bien descritas en capítulos cortos, aparentemente desconectados, pero que forman una especie de puzzle. Como en un juego, si leemos primero Mrs. Bridge, conocemos a la esposa en profundidad, pero el marido es sólo una presencia hermética. Eso despierta nuestra curiosidad y leyendo después Mr. Bridge por fin accedemos a sus pensamientos y repasamos la historia desde su punto de vista.
El inaccesible Mr. Bridge no ofrece muchas sorpresas (aunque algunas sí). Es un hombre hecho a sí mismo, profundamente conservador y orgulloso de lo que ha logrado: un buen empleo, una familia tradicional, una buena casa...
Mr. Bridge discovered that he could not read any more, though he continued holding the paper. He listened to his daughters and his wife and observed his son, but he no longer understood what was being said; as he listened to their voices and to the seasonal music of the insects the problems which had troubled him during the day did not seem important, and he reflected that he had practically everything he ever wanted.
Sin embargo, de alguna manera, la insatisfacción se va abriendo paso en las páginas del libro. Mr. Bridge no entiende la manera en que evoluciona la sociedad de su tiempo, está lleno de prejuicios raciales y, sobre todo, le resulta difícil comunicarse con sus personas más próximas. Tal como le dice su hija Ruth:
"You are a strange person", Ruth said."You are my father and all that, but I really don't know what goes on inside your head."
De la misma manera que sucedía en Mrs. Bridge, la presencia de la esposa es fantasmal, aparece muy poco y se percibe una desconexión que no es debida a falta de afecto pero que sí es causa de infelicidad:
Thoughtfully he contemplated the fearful blackness surrounding them, for there was no light anywhere beyond the rail of the ship, and he wondered if this was how it must be, if this was how they would end their lives, accompanying each other so closely, loving each other, touching one another with affection and sympathy, yet singularly alone.
Quizá es debido a que él no la considera una igual, sino una persona a la que ha de proteger, al igual que a sus hijos, lo que le impide a ella desarrollarse plenamente y es causa de infelicidad en el matrimonio:
He had taken her from the home where she had been sheltered as a child and substituted himself for her father, so she knew nothing she had not been permitted to know.
Está muy bien escrita, con una especie de delicadeza, que insinúa más que describe y es una prosa que se lee muy bien. Me recuerda a la melancolía suburbana y contenida de John Cheever, por ejemplo, son escritores que elevan la anécdota a categoría.
Pero también tengo que decir que esta segunda parte se me ha hecho pesada, quizá porque el formato ya no es novedoso, es mucho más larga y el señor Bridge no es precisamente la alegría de la huerta. Sin embargo, es de aquellos libros que ofrecen una recompensa lectora al que persevera, básicamente la satisfacción de haber completado el puzzle.
Hay una edición en español de Seix Barral Mr. Bridge y Mrs. Bridge que junta las dos partes, yo empezaría con la Mrs.
3,5*
El inaccesible Mr. Bridge no ofrece muchas sorpresas (aunque algunas sí). Es un hombre hecho a sí mismo, profundamente conservador y orgulloso de lo que ha logrado: un buen empleo, una familia tradicional, una buena casa...
Mr. Bridge discovered that he could not read any more, though he continued holding the paper. He listened to his daughters and his wife and observed his son, but he no longer understood what was being said; as he listened to their voices and to the seasonal music of the insects the problems which had troubled him during the day did not seem important, and he reflected that he had practically everything he ever wanted.
Sin embargo, de alguna manera, la insatisfacción se va abriendo paso en las páginas del libro. Mr. Bridge no entiende la manera en que evoluciona la sociedad de su tiempo, está lleno de prejuicios raciales y, sobre todo, le resulta difícil comunicarse con sus personas más próximas. Tal como le dice su hija Ruth:
"You are a strange person", Ruth said."You are my father and all that, but I really don't know what goes on inside your head."
De la misma manera que sucedía en Mrs. Bridge, la presencia de la esposa es fantasmal, aparece muy poco y se percibe una desconexión que no es debida a falta de afecto pero que sí es causa de infelicidad:
Thoughtfully he contemplated the fearful blackness surrounding them, for there was no light anywhere beyond the rail of the ship, and he wondered if this was how it must be, if this was how they would end their lives, accompanying each other so closely, loving each other, touching one another with affection and sympathy, yet singularly alone.
Quizá es debido a que él no la considera una igual, sino una persona a la que ha de proteger, al igual que a sus hijos, lo que le impide a ella desarrollarse plenamente y es causa de infelicidad en el matrimonio:
He had taken her from the home where she had been sheltered as a child and substituted himself for her father, so she knew nothing she had not been permitted to know.
Está muy bien escrita, con una especie de delicadeza, que insinúa más que describe y es una prosa que se lee muy bien. Me recuerda a la melancolía suburbana y contenida de John Cheever, por ejemplo, son escritores que elevan la anécdota a categoría.
Pero también tengo que decir que esta segunda parte se me ha hecho pesada, quizá porque el formato ya no es novedoso, es mucho más larga y el señor Bridge no es precisamente la alegría de la huerta. Sin embargo, es de aquellos libros que ofrecen una recompensa lectora al que persevera, básicamente la satisfacción de haber completado el puzzle.
Hay una edición en español de Seix Barral Mr. Bridge y Mrs. Bridge que junta las dos partes, yo empezaría con la Mrs.
3,5*
June 12, 2013
i've been thinking about writing a review for mr. bridge (and one for mrs. bridge) for three years now. in the midst of reading and even after i am always overflowing with reaction to the books but it's been hell trying to restrain my thoughts. each time i've found i think so much about them that i spin out to my own context, considering the influences of culture and community and nature and nurture and then i think many outrageous things about the world and find it hard to spin it back down to midwestern america, let alone actually writing a review, let alone two!
and it's hard for me now to want to read one of these novels without reading the other because while they do stand as individual and distinct works (mrs. bridge's naive repression resonates very differently from mr. bridge's view of the proprieties of a white middle-class american dream) back-to-back they are magical, reflecting and echoing, each enriching the other, the two books making a magnificent literary marriage from one complicated one. published ten years apart (this one came out in 1969, ten years after mrs. bridge) they are such perfectly complementary portraits, perspectives of a mister and a missus who ostensibly shared a life. but i finally think i know what i want to say now, so do forgive me if you happen to stumble upon one and then the other of these reviews and see some repetition in my theme. heck, i may even reuse these opening paragraphs for both! :)
mr. bridge would want you to know that he is a devoted father and husband. he works very hard so his family will have all the advantages he did not, and so they will be very provided for when he is gone. he is very fastidious and very conservative. he has his own code of honour but what he tells you without telling you by telling you what he thinks, in this masterful book by evan s. connell, is that he's pompous, bigoted and opinionated and he thinks that makes him the right kind of american. it's the most amazing thing about mr. bridge, how intimately you get to know him -- all his aspects. and connell does it just that way, sketching him in, one vignette at a time, revealing the man by his actions and his words, in marvellously controlled, charming, engaging, and sometimes acerbic prose. each chapter reveals or compounds another aspect of this finely wrought character and his world: his family, his work, his employees, his club, his business associates -- he doesn't have any friends. mr. bridge can't breach his own distance and really? nothing gets out, and nothing comes in, nor does he really want it to. he feels he has done right by his family and has lived a productive and useful life.
mr bridge is a testament to an early twentieth century midwestern american man, to an era, a time that came before, in a community i could never have fit into, a place i've never really been able to comprehend. connell's portrait of mr. bridge is a fully-realized frankenstein who suffused me when i read his book. i felt very strongly in both my readings that these very WASP-y books finally helped me understand a worldview so outside my own understanding. i've never been able to learn the ability to remain composed, impassive, unemotional. i've often thought it might be nice to be stoic in person and also philosophy, to quell the storms of passion and empathy, to exchange them for stolid control, and the closest i think i might get is to step into mr. bridge's world and live a part of his life with him again. and even though his world is harsh and unfair, it is also funny and wise and mr. bridge himself is seductive is his arrogance. i copy the last two paragraphs of the novel in spoiler tags below. there's no grand reveal in these words but they complete his picture, and i often think of them, and at last, with compassion.
and it's hard for me now to want to read one of these novels without reading the other because while they do stand as individual and distinct works (mrs. bridge's naive repression resonates very differently from mr. bridge's view of the proprieties of a white middle-class american dream) back-to-back they are magical, reflecting and echoing, each enriching the other, the two books making a magnificent literary marriage from one complicated one. published ten years apart (this one came out in 1969, ten years after mrs. bridge) they are such perfectly complementary portraits, perspectives of a mister and a missus who ostensibly shared a life. but i finally think i know what i want to say now, so do forgive me if you happen to stumble upon one and then the other of these reviews and see some repetition in my theme. heck, i may even reuse these opening paragraphs for both! :)
mr. bridge would want you to know that he is a devoted father and husband. he works very hard so his family will have all the advantages he did not, and so they will be very provided for when he is gone. he is very fastidious and very conservative. he has his own code of honour but what he tells you without telling you by telling you what he thinks, in this masterful book by evan s. connell, is that he's pompous, bigoted and opinionated and he thinks that makes him the right kind of american. it's the most amazing thing about mr. bridge, how intimately you get to know him -- all his aspects. and connell does it just that way, sketching him in, one vignette at a time, revealing the man by his actions and his words, in marvellously controlled, charming, engaging, and sometimes acerbic prose. each chapter reveals or compounds another aspect of this finely wrought character and his world: his family, his work, his employees, his club, his business associates -- he doesn't have any friends. mr. bridge can't breach his own distance and really? nothing gets out, and nothing comes in, nor does he really want it to. he feels he has done right by his family and has lived a productive and useful life.
mr bridge is a testament to an early twentieth century midwestern american man, to an era, a time that came before, in a community i could never have fit into, a place i've never really been able to comprehend. connell's portrait of mr. bridge is a fully-realized frankenstein who suffused me when i read his book. i felt very strongly in both my readings that these very WASP-y books finally helped me understand a worldview so outside my own understanding. i've never been able to learn the ability to remain composed, impassive, unemotional. i've often thought it might be nice to be stoic in person and also philosophy, to quell the storms of passion and empathy, to exchange them for stolid control, and the closest i think i might get is to step into mr. bridge's world and live a part of his life with him again. and even though his world is harsh and unfair, it is also funny and wise and mr. bridge himself is seductive is his arrogance. i copy the last two paragraphs of the novel in spoiler tags below. there's no grand reveal in these words but they complete his picture, and i often think of them, and at last, with compassion.
September 30, 2024
The story of Mr. and Mrs. Bridge gets even more uncomfortable with this one. The feelings of pity and compassion I had for India Bridge went a little by the wayside when it came to seeing things through her husband Walter’s point of view.
“He was happy, everybody in the family was happy, therefore this life ought to continue indefinitely.”
Walter was one of those men of that era in the United States, the time between the wars, who prided themselves on doing the “right” thing always, never giving in, turning a blind eye to feelings, and using a sad mix of fear and self-protection to trump any compassion. They believed they were holding up the side of right and taking care of everyone, when really they were forcing down their feelings and causing no end of harm to their families that often lasted through generations.
We saw these traits in Walter in the Mrs. Bridge book, but here, we get to look inside his head, which is often darker than you’d expect, though he does sometimes question his ways.
“I suppose the same is true of most men. Or are they somehow unlike me? Are they able to share themselves?”
It was so interesting to see how his children reacted in different ways to their father. On one hand they respected him, but each rebelled in their own ways. Only the oldest, Ruth, was able to control him, and the way she did that was very disturbing.
While Mrs. Bridge was a blend of comedy and tragedy, Mr. Bridge, though there were funny moments, feels all tragedy. It was easier to feel sympathy for Mrs. Bridge because of what was put upon her, by society and her husband’s personality. But what the reader feels for Walter, who does these things to himself and to his family, is much more complex. I do feel he was a product of his times, of a thread of puritanism that was common then, and of a misguided belief in a threat posed by “the other” that is apparently and tragically still strong in this country today. But to see the suffering caused by this thinking, in himself and in those around him, is a painful thing to watch, but hopefully exists as a warning.
“They had lived reasonably and logically, with fine practicality, and it had come to this. Over halfway through life, possibly much closer to the end than they knew, this was where they found themselves.”
“He was happy, everybody in the family was happy, therefore this life ought to continue indefinitely.”
Walter was one of those men of that era in the United States, the time between the wars, who prided themselves on doing the “right” thing always, never giving in, turning a blind eye to feelings, and using a sad mix of fear and self-protection to trump any compassion. They believed they were holding up the side of right and taking care of everyone, when really they were forcing down their feelings and causing no end of harm to their families that often lasted through generations.
We saw these traits in Walter in the Mrs. Bridge book, but here, we get to look inside his head, which is often darker than you’d expect, though he does sometimes question his ways.
“I suppose the same is true of most men. Or are they somehow unlike me? Are they able to share themselves?”
It was so interesting to see how his children reacted in different ways to their father. On one hand they respected him, but each rebelled in their own ways. Only the oldest, Ruth, was able to control him, and the way she did that was very disturbing.
While Mrs. Bridge was a blend of comedy and tragedy, Mr. Bridge, though there were funny moments, feels all tragedy. It was easier to feel sympathy for Mrs. Bridge because of what was put upon her, by society and her husband’s personality. But what the reader feels for Walter, who does these things to himself and to his family, is much more complex. I do feel he was a product of his times, of a thread of puritanism that was common then, and of a misguided belief in a threat posed by “the other” that is apparently and tragically still strong in this country today. But to see the suffering caused by this thinking, in himself and in those around him, is a painful thing to watch, but hopefully exists as a warning.
“They had lived reasonably and logically, with fine practicality, and it had come to this. Over halfway through life, possibly much closer to the end than they knew, this was where they found themselves.”
February 21, 2016
I prefer to give Mr. Bridge 4.5 stars, since I didn’t think that it quite measured up to Mrs. Bridge, although it’s still worth reading after Mrs. Bridge. The vignette style of both books is something that I seldom see and love. Just like Mrs. Bridge, this book is not plot-driven. Nothing major happens. Both books are subtle and heartwarming. Both will remain with me. Some may not like Mr. Bridge. I prefer to not judge him too harshly. He was a man of his time in the Midwest. I prefer to look at his positive side. He loved his family and was traditional.
March 6, 2020
A companion novel to Mrs Bridge, Mrs Bridge was published eleven years after. And you do really need to read Mrs Bridge first to get the full benefit of this. Mr Bridge is a bigot and a racist, a product of his time who is unable (much like his wife) to reflect on where his opinions come from and whether they are correct. It's hard to like him, but he does feel fully rounded. The most fun though is with his interactions with his son, Douglas who is always butting up against his father, and these scenes are often very funny. Highly recommended, just read Mrs Bridge first.
June 25, 2017
Connell brilliantly describes the daily life of the upper middle class Bridges. I considered abandoning Mr. Bridge several times. Walter Bridge lives a regimented and unexamined life. He is a bigot. He is boring except for an occasional flash of wit and a few acts of unexpected kindness. I didn't like him at all. But I did finish, because Connell's pitch-perfect prose made me turn the pages.
November 24, 2020
As a follow up to Mrs Bridge, here we get the story from Mr. Bridge’s POV. He is almost as insulated from the world at large as Mrs Bridge, but he doesn’t see it. The racism, sexism, and anti-semitism are rampant here as well. He is also a man who is unable to express his emotions for his family other than through taking care of them financially and judging those who are non-conformists harshly.
February 13, 2021
"I know very little about other men, he thought, although I go through life assuming that I do. I know only myself, but I do believe I know myself. What I am, as well as what I am not, I think I know, even if I may not know exactly what I would like to be. I any case, whatever I feel or think or see or believe is a consequence of my own sensibility, not that of some other man. I believe what I believe, and I have not yet believed a single thing only because it was believed by others, nor do I intend to. I can be grateful for this, at least: that I have kept myself. I have not once dressed up in a costume. There may be stronger consolations, but not many. Be that as it may, I cannot live differently than I do. Whatever the reasons for this, good or bad, they exist. Evidently that is enough. So, early tomorrow, I must get up again to do what I have done today. I will get up early to do this, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and there is nothing to discuss" (108).
"Mr. Bridge in his swivel chair, rocking back and forth while his fingers formed a steeple beneath his chin regarded his truculent, unsatisfied daughters, experienced a moment of epiphany. He had supposed he was being no more than clever, he had thought he was merely extricating himself from an uncomfortable situation when he returned their wrongdoing to them. Instead he had touched a truth half buried like a root in his path, stumbling over it--the futility of punishment. But at once his instant of enlightenment lay in ashes while logic reasserted itself, pointing out that from the beginning we have believed in punishment, we have ordained it, therefor this precept of society must be valid.
So the vision came but then was gone, and he found himself troubled by a problem far exceeding that of his quarreling daughters" (180).
"'You're not as cold as you pretend to be,' she said. 'I think your doors open in different places, that's all. Most people just don't know how to get in to you. They knock and they knock where the door is supposed to be, but it's a blank wall. But you're there. I've watched you. I've seen you do some awfully cold things warmly and some warm things coldly. Or does that make sense?" (262).
"He often thought about this; it saddened him and filled him with grave wonderment, and caused him to feel obscurely guilty. Perhaps they should not have waited so long to take this trip. They could have visited Europe sooner, seen and done many things. Now it was almost too late. She was passing through life with a neutral and pleasant expression, utterly failing to recognize the world in which she lived: a desperate, harsh remorseless world where everybody knew there was a piece of paper inside a Chinese fortune cookie" (285).
"He thought of getting dressed again and going out to search for her, but now it was too late. He reflected that there were many things he had not done because for one reason or another they seemed unsafe--too many, perhaps" (303).
"Mr. Bridge in his swivel chair, rocking back and forth while his fingers formed a steeple beneath his chin regarded his truculent, unsatisfied daughters, experienced a moment of epiphany. He had supposed he was being no more than clever, he had thought he was merely extricating himself from an uncomfortable situation when he returned their wrongdoing to them. Instead he had touched a truth half buried like a root in his path, stumbling over it--the futility of punishment. But at once his instant of enlightenment lay in ashes while logic reasserted itself, pointing out that from the beginning we have believed in punishment, we have ordained it, therefor this precept of society must be valid.
So the vision came but then was gone, and he found himself troubled by a problem far exceeding that of his quarreling daughters" (180).
"'You're not as cold as you pretend to be,' she said. 'I think your doors open in different places, that's all. Most people just don't know how to get in to you. They knock and they knock where the door is supposed to be, but it's a blank wall. But you're there. I've watched you. I've seen you do some awfully cold things warmly and some warm things coldly. Or does that make sense?" (262).
"He often thought about this; it saddened him and filled him with grave wonderment, and caused him to feel obscurely guilty. Perhaps they should not have waited so long to take this trip. They could have visited Europe sooner, seen and done many things. Now it was almost too late. She was passing through life with a neutral and pleasant expression, utterly failing to recognize the world in which she lived: a desperate, harsh remorseless world where everybody knew there was a piece of paper inside a Chinese fortune cookie" (285).
"He thought of getting dressed again and going out to search for her, but now it was too late. He reflected that there were many things he had not done because for one reason or another they seemed unsafe--too many, perhaps" (303).
March 24, 2012
I read Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge in close succession, and I loved both of them. I recommend reading them in the order in which they were written: Mrs. Bridge in 1959 and Mr. Bridge in 1969. The stories in Mr. Bridge build on the ones told from his wife's perspective, and a more complete picture of the family emerges. Mr. Bridge isn't as likable a character as his wife, but I don't think the greatness of the novel should be discounted simply because its narrator is taciturn and narrow-minded.
It was fun reading about what Kansas City was like in the 1930s and '40s. But the most welcome aspect was getting a glimpse into the mind of each of the Bridges, characters that reminded me of some of my relatives. Good literature is known for highlighting our shared humanity, and in that respect, these novels may be called great literature.
It was fun reading about what Kansas City was like in the 1930s and '40s. But the most welcome aspect was getting a glimpse into the mind of each of the Bridges, characters that reminded me of some of my relatives. Good literature is known for highlighting our shared humanity, and in that respect, these novels may be called great literature.
March 14, 2021
How sorry am I that I didn’t read this book in tandem with “Mrs. Bridge” two years ago? Very sorry, more than 100 books later, I have a very faint memory of it, but know I loved it. This book is life from the viewpoint of Mr. Bridge (obviously). I’m reminded of another favorite book, “Stoner,” with Connell’s writing; not a lot happens, it is snippets of this man’s life and his family. Son, Douglas, plays a larger role than daughters Ruth and Carolyn, I’m sure because of fathers and sons, and that relationship is sometimes fraught. And he’s a hard man, this is the generation before World War I, the man of the house, Mr. Bridge goes to his law office every day, has dinner at the country club on the weekends with friends, but all along I wondered, is he really happy? I’m sure he asks this question too. With Midwestern sensibilities and several generations past, he is the father and the archetype head of the family and is at times unforgiving, rude, demanding, racist, aggravating, and just plain mean. There wasn’t a lot of visible love for his family there. And yet, I cared about Mr. Bridge and his family and wondered what will happen to them once I closed the book.
February 3, 2018
Oh my. I loved this book with an ache that is reserved for the things you don't really want to put too much thought into, because the visceral feeling is best when it is beyond words. In any case, I will say that this is one of the best novels I have read that simply focuses on the American family, in particular, the Midwestern family unit, which is a subtle offshoot of the grand scheme of the nuclear dream America put forward pre and post World Wars, and remains like dark matter in our current social systems. I'd read Mrs. Bridge a few years ago, and also greatly enjoyed it, but Mr. Bridge hits a nerve in a way that I don't recall Mrs. Bridge doing. Mr. Bridge is unlikable, but tragic and hilarious as a character, and so familiar to me. I grew up in Illinois, my parents are from Minnesota, and I now live in Indiana after a stint in the northwest. Mr. Bridge is like, part of my blood, man. Listen: I laughed and I cried reading this book --the classic sign of brilliant storytelling.
September 9, 2024
A terrific companion piece to 'Mrs. Bridge', with a wealth of surprises for those who were taken with volume one. I'm not sure that I've come across this fascinating a dissection of a heterosexual partnership since Bergman's 'Scenes from a Marriage'... and there's certainly a lot less angst - even if there seems an equal amount of trouble. (Connell also manages a lot more laughs than Bergman... who I don't recall managing any laughs at all.)
'Mrs. Bridge' 'clocks in' at 240 pages. Through her story, what we mainly learn about Mr. Bridge is that he is hardly ever home and, when he is, he rarely speaks. But that's not accurate - though it certainly may have seemed that way to Mrs. B. What we learn through his version is: when he is home, much of his time is spent instructing or disciplining his children... and, along those lines, he certainly has a lot to say. (~ which explains why 'Mr. Bridge' runs 130 pages longer than 'Mrs. Bridge'.)
Mr. B is quite a character - not particularly colorful but nothing if not resolute (which is the engine that drives the novel). Like his wife, he is, of course, a product of his time - living by the standards, beliefs and prejudices of his midwestern milieu. At heart, he is a remarkably decent man - a hard-working attorney, yet bigotry courts his heart considerably, in ways he seems to be only mildly aware of.
If we find ourselves on his side more often than not, it's probably because (as is revealed) his character was shaped from a childhood of penury. He swore to himself that what happened to him (i.e., his own father being foolish about finances) would not happen to his family. And, to Mr. B, a promise is a promise.
As with 'Mrs. Bridge', Connell shows his protagonist warts and all - though in both cases the warts appear largely to be an unquestioned abhorrence for or emotional disturbance due to anything foreign to their socially-defined natures. Mr. B, for example, is old-school Republican; suspicious of FDR yet admiring of Abraham Lincoln. He believes in fairness without understanding the meaning of fairness for all. Set in his ways, he believes he is always right. Yet - also like his wife, though not to the same degree - he wrestles with self-doubt.
Together... the two novels are a marvelous (and often entertaining and insightful) window into a specific time and a specific social strata.
'Mrs. Bridge' 'clocks in' at 240 pages. Through her story, what we mainly learn about Mr. Bridge is that he is hardly ever home and, when he is, he rarely speaks. But that's not accurate - though it certainly may have seemed that way to Mrs. B. What we learn through his version is: when he is home, much of his time is spent instructing or disciplining his children... and, along those lines, he certainly has a lot to say. (~ which explains why 'Mr. Bridge' runs 130 pages longer than 'Mrs. Bridge'.)
Mr. B is quite a character - not particularly colorful but nothing if not resolute (which is the engine that drives the novel). Like his wife, he is, of course, a product of his time - living by the standards, beliefs and prejudices of his midwestern milieu. At heart, he is a remarkably decent man - a hard-working attorney, yet bigotry courts his heart considerably, in ways he seems to be only mildly aware of.
If we find ourselves on his side more often than not, it's probably because (as is revealed) his character was shaped from a childhood of penury. He swore to himself that what happened to him (i.e., his own father being foolish about finances) would not happen to his family. And, to Mr. B, a promise is a promise.
As with 'Mrs. Bridge', Connell shows his protagonist warts and all - though in both cases the warts appear largely to be an unquestioned abhorrence for or emotional disturbance due to anything foreign to their socially-defined natures. Mr. B, for example, is old-school Republican; suspicious of FDR yet admiring of Abraham Lincoln. He believes in fairness without understanding the meaning of fairness for all. Set in his ways, he believes he is always right. Yet - also like his wife, though not to the same degree - he wrestles with self-doubt.
Together... the two novels are a marvelous (and often entertaining and insightful) window into a specific time and a specific social strata.
June 22, 2015
Astounding. Both Bridge novels are perfectly executed and it's a breathtaking thing for a reader like myself. The plain, straight, undecorated prose serves to make the author completely invisible. I was there in the world of these two characters, there was nothing in the way. Somehow it gave me an access, allowed a closer proximity to them than is more generally gained. I think Connell stands apart for this reason among his more famous contemporaries, such as Roth, Updike, Bellow and Yates. He is a miniaturist in a way that some brilliant female but very few male fiction writers are. I suspect these novels will be one of the handful that stick.
November 18, 2019
Mr. Bridge, like Evan Connell's companion book, Mrs. Bridge, is written in a series of short character-revealing vignettes. Walter Bridge, the title character, is a prosperous Kansas City Lawyer. He is devoted to his wife and their three children, and proves his love by working long hours at the office to provide them with a life of plenty and affluence. When he does spend time with them, he often finds himself at a loss--unable to understand who they are and what they want from him. He gets his greatest pleasures from taking stock of his accumulated assets. He has many satisfactions but not much joy.
Like Mrs. Bridge, Mr. Bridge is a well written, touching book. Highly recommended.
Like Mrs. Bridge, Mr. Bridge is a well written, touching book. Highly recommended.
December 10, 2012
This book can easily be read/enjoyed ("enjoyed": aesthetically appreciated) as the answer to What if Patrick Bateman became a 1950s* family man?
Take careful note of
- the dog-killing episode (Chapter 64/ground glass)
- the creepy Ruth-centric episodes (Chapters 59/in the garden, 66/high school album, 68/Coppelia, 70/So soon?, 71/Juliet)
- his racially progressive attitude towards blacks that masks a seething racial contempt (numerous chapters, but especially Chapter 8/Lester, 9/trouble in the road ahead, 65/liberal arts)
- his obsession with pop music (several spots, but especially Chapter 67/strange music)
- all of those unaccountable "late hours at the office"
And please take for example Chapter 24/EK wherein a homeless man in a shabby trenchcoat (or hallucination?) steps out of the shadows and attempts an armed robbery.
Mr. Bridge - more lost in thought as to the future of his Eastman Kodak investment - shoves the criminal aside with a "Don't be ridiculous!" and keeps on walking. And "while driving home he contemplated the incident...The man's presumption was extraordinary. If he had no money he should get a job like everybody else." (pgs. 62-63)
Compare/contrast it with, simply, pgs. 130-132 from American Psycho:
"Get a goddamn job, Al. You've got a negative attitude. That's what's stopping you. You've got to get your act together. I'll help you." (etc.)
________________________
*The book is set in the 1930's, but the vibe is much more Eisenhower Era - an understandable timeloopiness seeping through the text as the novel was published in 1969...
Take careful note of
- the dog-killing episode (Chapter 64/ground glass)
- the creepy Ruth-centric episodes (Chapters 59/in the garden, 66/high school album, 68/Coppelia, 70/So soon?, 71/Juliet)
- his racially progressive attitude towards blacks that masks a seething racial contempt (numerous chapters, but especially Chapter 8/Lester, 9/trouble in the road ahead, 65/liberal arts)
- his obsession with pop music (several spots, but especially Chapter 67/strange music)
- all of those unaccountable "late hours at the office"
And please take for example Chapter 24/EK wherein a homeless man in a shabby trenchcoat (or hallucination?) steps out of the shadows and attempts an armed robbery.
Mr. Bridge - more lost in thought as to the future of his Eastman Kodak investment - shoves the criminal aside with a "Don't be ridiculous!" and keeps on walking. And "while driving home he contemplated the incident...The man's presumption was extraordinary. If he had no money he should get a job like everybody else." (pgs. 62-63)
Compare/contrast it with, simply, pgs. 130-132 from American Psycho:
"Get a goddamn job, Al. You've got a negative attitude. That's what's stopping you. You've got to get your act together. I'll help you." (etc.)
________________________
*The book is set in the 1930's, but the vibe is much more Eisenhower Era - an understandable timeloopiness seeping through the text as the novel was published in 1969...
March 30, 2019
La lettura di questo libro ha senso soprattutto se si conosce l’altro testo con cui fa coppia: “Mrs Bridge”. Il protagonista è noioso, irritante, politicamente scorretto, conformista, cinico.... e potremmo continuare con questo elenco di segno negativo. Il fascino di questa lettura, rapida ma non “leggera”, sta proprio nel racconto schietto di una America ipocrita, rozza nei suoi pregiudizi, incoerente che traspare in ogni riga.
August 8, 2010
To experience a unique style of novel writing, you really need to pick up Evan S. Connell’s “Bridge” novels. He is a portrait painter with words. Actually, it is a pointillist painting he renders, with each short chapter presenting a dot- just one piece of the bigger picture. It is amazing how well his simple method works. What he tells you in each brief vignette is rich in nuance and observation. And it all blends together effortlessly.
Like “Mrs. Bridge”, this portrait is from the 1920’s to 1940’s. Mr. Bridge is an upper middle class lawyer who is rigidly conservative, intelligent, ambitious and hard working, For the most part, he is calm and controlled in his family relationships, even when his children throw him some curveballs. Not being religious, he doesn’t preach except to expect reasonable and responsible behavior from his children. His prejudices are obvious. He is consumed with being a good provider for his family, but there is a definite cold and closed off edge to him. Don’t think I’d want this guy for a husband.
I discovered that Evan S. Connell is still alive and soon to be 86. Also read a piece from writer Anne Lamott who writes “When I read Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, its greatness exhilarated me—that you could create a living breathing painting, with regular plain old words, if you took the time to choose those words very carefully, and took out absolutely anything extraneous, anything intended to show everyone what a fabulous writer you were. My mouth was hanging open with amazement after just a few pages. He and my father were very close friends my whole childhood, and I could not believe that such a quiet man, who sat with us for meals and passed the dinner rolls, could write such an exquisite, funny, and painful book about an upper class wife and mother in Kansas City. In fact, I remember being under the table when I was about six (and a little shy), looking up into that incredibly handsome face, and deciding I wanted to marry him.”
I must admit that one aspect of this book that I did not understand was the father’s occasional mention of “desire for his own daughter.” Seemed out of character for this straight-laced lawyer father, but as one of the characters in “O Brother, Where Art Thou” says, “It’s a fool (that) looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”
Like “Mrs. Bridge”, this portrait is from the 1920’s to 1940’s. Mr. Bridge is an upper middle class lawyer who is rigidly conservative, intelligent, ambitious and hard working, For the most part, he is calm and controlled in his family relationships, even when his children throw him some curveballs. Not being religious, he doesn’t preach except to expect reasonable and responsible behavior from his children. His prejudices are obvious. He is consumed with being a good provider for his family, but there is a definite cold and closed off edge to him. Don’t think I’d want this guy for a husband.
I discovered that Evan S. Connell is still alive and soon to be 86. Also read a piece from writer Anne Lamott who writes “When I read Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, its greatness exhilarated me—that you could create a living breathing painting, with regular plain old words, if you took the time to choose those words very carefully, and took out absolutely anything extraneous, anything intended to show everyone what a fabulous writer you were. My mouth was hanging open with amazement after just a few pages. He and my father were very close friends my whole childhood, and I could not believe that such a quiet man, who sat with us for meals and passed the dinner rolls, could write such an exquisite, funny, and painful book about an upper class wife and mother in Kansas City. In fact, I remember being under the table when I was about six (and a little shy), looking up into that incredibly handsome face, and deciding I wanted to marry him.”
I must admit that one aspect of this book that I did not understand was the father’s occasional mention of “desire for his own daughter.” Seemed out of character for this straight-laced lawyer father, but as one of the characters in “O Brother, Where Art Thou” says, “It’s a fool (that) looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”
July 11, 2017
I had read Mrs. Bridge 4 years ago, and I wanted to read this companion novel. While I gave Mrs. Bridge 3 stars, the ending has stayed with me and reading this novel, my rating should have been 4 stars. Evan Connell has written a pair of novels set in the 1920s- 1940s, one told from the wife's point of view and this one from her husband's point of view. He is an attorney in Kansas City and part of the upper middle class, although he worries often about his money and seems to be extremely conservative- financially as well as politically and personally. He has a one man law office with one employee, Julia, a spinster who lives with her disabled sister. He thinks it unseemly to discuss his professional life with his wife and three children and as he has no real hobbies or interests (outside of reading several newspapers with a cocktail each evening), the struggle to connect with his family is real. Often late for dinner, he has a tendency to dismiss their problems and concerns. He believes his wife should deal with their children's lives; he is there to give them money and to allow them to borrow the car. The chapters are short and propel you through the story and while Mr. Bridge irritated me with his hyper-conservative views, the author seems to be true to the time and place. It was a perfect, fast summer read (it really did not take me 8 days; I had picked it up and started it and put it aside after 50 pages. I finished it in a day and a half).
November 25, 2020
Evans Connell passed away quietly in an assisted-living facility about seven years ago. He was truly a genius. His encyclopedic knowledge was captured by the poem Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel. If he wanted to show off, he could have. But the Bridge novels are simple, plain, uneventful. Yet the flatness precisely demonstrated a masterful grasp of the extraordinary details of the ordinary.
Indeed, Mr Bridge probably represents the very best of contemporary writing in English. The language is precise, crisp, yet full of subtlety. There is almost no redundancy. It is incredibly easy to read, for the lack of rhetorics; yet it is incredibly hard to read, for the need to digest every single phrase. It is almost like premium Vodka - to be sipped slowly, without much flavor, but intoxicates.
Indeed, Mr Bridge probably represents the very best of contemporary writing in English. The language is precise, crisp, yet full of subtlety. There is almost no redundancy. It is incredibly easy to read, for the lack of rhetorics; yet it is incredibly hard to read, for the need to digest every single phrase. It is almost like premium Vodka - to be sipped slowly, without much flavor, but intoxicates.
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April 3, 2020the character who called him a puritan nailed it. mr bridge would be right at home in plymouth plantation: his hat doesn't buckle but his head sure does. (p.s. devastating to know that there was a 3rd novel focusing on ruth planned that never came to fruition. i hate when stuff doesn't come to fruition!)
August 29, 2020
The man who gives everything for a family he doesn’t know
We already know the plot, and we know Mr. Bridge will be dead by the end of it, but in this sequel we get an unforgettable answer to the mystery of Mrs. Bridge— who is this weird, laconic, angry man married to India? He’s more complicated than you’d think.
We already know the plot, and we know Mr. Bridge will be dead by the end of it, but in this sequel we get an unforgettable answer to the mystery of Mrs. Bridge— who is this weird, laconic, angry man married to India? He’s more complicated than you’d think.
February 26, 2022
A heartbreaking story that depicts a man who is trapped by society's expectations of him. In the end, Mr Bridge never knew how to have joy, or even had joy, because he placed his responsibilities and expectations over his own happiness.
August 13, 2020
Mr.Bridge, the companion novel to Mrs.Bridge, tells the story of his life and though it converges with the Mrs. every once in a while, as would be expected since their lives are intricately connected as husband and wife, it can stand on its own as much a separate novel as Mrs.Bridge. It’s not the same story looked at from two perspectives; both the novels are made up of individual experiences in a life lived together. Both are character studies and as far as his character goes, Mr.Bridge is stuffy, bigoted, racist, intolerant, kind when he needs to be and just like his wife, lives his life by a manual - ‘reasonably, logically and with fine practicality.’ Putting all those things together, you’d think he’s quite insufferable, which he is but that’s beside the point.
Compared to Mrs.Bridge, this is a more expansive novel that goes more and more into the details, and while there’s nothing wrong or boring about that, I missed the precision of language that I felt so disarmingly in that one. But just like its predecessor, Evan S. Connell writes this novel too with instinctive precision, remarkable insight, and captures perfectly the rhythms and reasons of a working-class man in a small town, and I would add American to the description but the more I think about it, his qualities are way too universal to narrow it down to a nationality.
In 141 short but mostly long chapters, we look at a life lived mostly at the office, working hard and harder everyday to put things in order for his family, for the present and in the event of his death. I know men like Mr.Bridge, I work with them; they assume an all-important role because they work and support their families, whilst not allowing their wives to. These men live gravely empty lives in square pegs, and ultimately just become typecasts that future generations avoid growing up into.
Just like the Mrs., nothing much happens in this one either until Mr.Bridge realises how devoid of joy his life had been. The book ends there so I don’t know if he did anything about finding some joy, but knowing him, I assume he just went back to work. 4.5 stars!
Compared to Mrs.Bridge, this is a more expansive novel that goes more and more into the details, and while there’s nothing wrong or boring about that, I missed the precision of language that I felt so disarmingly in that one. But just like its predecessor, Evan S. Connell writes this novel too with instinctive precision, remarkable insight, and captures perfectly the rhythms and reasons of a working-class man in a small town, and I would add American to the description but the more I think about it, his qualities are way too universal to narrow it down to a nationality.
In 141 short but mostly long chapters, we look at a life lived mostly at the office, working hard and harder everyday to put things in order for his family, for the present and in the event of his death. I know men like Mr.Bridge, I work with them; they assume an all-important role because they work and support their families, whilst not allowing their wives to. These men live gravely empty lives in square pegs, and ultimately just become typecasts that future generations avoid growing up into.
Just like the Mrs., nothing much happens in this one either until Mr.Bridge realises how devoid of joy his life had been. The book ends there so I don’t know if he did anything about finding some joy, but knowing him, I assume he just went back to work. 4.5 stars!
August 26, 2017
I read this because I loved Mrs. Bridge so much. This book is equally well written, but of the two Mrs. Bridge is my favorite, which is a function of the kind of characters they are: Mrs. Bridge is an idle, wealthy housewife, perhaps not naturally drawn to introspection, but the nature of her life makes it impossible to avoid. Whereas Mr. Bridge is a workaholic, and can mostly avoid the deeper questions. But for a few select moments of existential malaise, he is wholly satisfied with the productivity of his life.
Mr. Bridge was less sympathetic due to his racism, which had sharper edges than Mrs. Bridge's. This is not a knock against the book: I thought it was an accurate portrayal of the cognitive dissonance and self deception that accompanies racism: Mr. Bridge resents any implication from his children than he 'hates Jews,' but at parties he makes anti-semitic remarks among men he knows 'feel the same way.' He insists he is not prejudiced when he clearly is - even acknowledging in his thoughts that he approves of the German pogroms. Some things don't change. There's also an undercurrent of anger and fear in the instances where racism is challenged in his life: He is, above all, a man in favor of affirming the status quo, a perfect conservative.
I recommend both books for their ability to render daily life compelling and meaningful. They are each phenomenal character studies. On occasion I thought Mr. Bridge's penchant for examining and re-examining his stock certificates was comic, in a way that 'revealed the authorial hand,' other than that I thought he was fully and artfully rendered.
Mr. Bridge was less sympathetic due to his racism, which had sharper edges than Mrs. Bridge's. This is not a knock against the book: I thought it was an accurate portrayal of the cognitive dissonance and self deception that accompanies racism: Mr. Bridge resents any implication from his children than he 'hates Jews,' but at parties he makes anti-semitic remarks among men he knows 'feel the same way.' He insists he is not prejudiced when he clearly is - even acknowledging in his thoughts that he approves of the German pogroms. Some things don't change. There's also an undercurrent of anger and fear in the instances where racism is challenged in his life: He is, above all, a man in favor of affirming the status quo, a perfect conservative.
I recommend both books for their ability to render daily life compelling and meaningful. They are each phenomenal character studies. On occasion I thought Mr. Bridge's penchant for examining and re-examining his stock certificates was comic, in a way that 'revealed the authorial hand,' other than that I thought he was fully and artfully rendered.
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