Author of ‘Bridges of Madison County’ dies at 77
Bittersweet 1992 novel turned into hit movie and Broadway musical
Robert James Waller, whose best-selling, bittersweet 1992 novel “The Bridges of Madison County” was turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood and later a soaring Broadway musical, has died in Texas, according to a long time friend. He was 77.
Scott Cawelti, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, said Waller died early Friday at his home in Fredericksburg, Texas. He had been fighting multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.
In “Bridges,” which Waller famously wrote in 11 days, the roving National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid spends four days romancing Francesca Johnson, a war bride from Italy married to a no-nonsense Iowa farmer.
Waller’s novel reached No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list and stayed on it for over three years, longer than any work of fiction since “The Robe,” a novel about Jesus’ crucifixion published in the early 1950s. The Eastwood-directed 1995 movie grossed US$182 million worldwide.
Many critics made fun of “Bridges,” calling it sappy and cliche-ridden. The Independent newspaper said of the central romantic pair “it is hard to believe in, or to like, either of them.” Publishers Weekly was more charitable, calling the book, “quietly powerful and thoroughly credible.”
The New York Times was dismissive: “Waller depicts their mating dance in plodding detail, but he fails to develop them as believable characters,” reviewer Eils Lotozo wrote. “Instead, we get a lot of quasi-mystical business about the shaman-like photographer who overwhelms the shy, bookish Francesca with ‘his sheer emotional and physical power.’”