Author of ‘Bridges’ Waller dies at 77

UK painter Hodgkin dead

NEW YORK, March 11, (AP): Robert James Waller, whose best-selling, bittersweet 1992 romance novel “The Bridges of Madison County” was turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood and later into a soaring Broadway musical, has died in Texas, according to a longtime friend. He was 77.

Scott Cawelti, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, told The Associated Press that Waller died early Friday at his home in Fredericksburg, Texas. He had been fighting multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.

In “Bridges,” a literary phenomenon which Waller famously wrote in 11 days, the roving National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid spends four days taking pictures of bridges and also romancing Francesca Johnson, a war bride from Italy married to a no-nonsense Iowa farmer. One famous line from the book reads: “The old dreams were good dreams; they didn’t work out but I’m glad I had them.”

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 $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 quasimystical business about the shaman-like photographer who overwhelms the shy, bookish Francesca with ‘his sheer emotional and physical power.’”

Waller

Turned

Readers, however, bought more than 12 million copies in 40 languages. “Bridges” turned the unknown writer into a multimillionaire and made Madison County, Iowa, an international tourist attraction.

“I really do have a small ego,” Waller told The New York Times in 2002. “I am open to rational discussion. If you don’t like the book and can say why, I am willing to listen. But the criticism turned to nastiness. ... I was stunned.”

The novel prompted couples across the world to marry on Madison County’s covered bridges. Around the town of Winterset, population 4,200, tourists arrived by the busloads, buying “Bridges” T-shirts, perfume and postcards. Thousands signed in at the Chamber of Commerce office, where they could use restrooms marked “Roberts” and “Francescas.”

Waller told The Des Moines Register in 1992 that “Bridges” was “written” in his mind as he drove from Des Moines to Cedar Falls after photographing the covered bridges in Madison County.

“It’s something that’s difficult to explain,” he recounted. “As I drove home, it just came to me. I had some sort of Zen feeling, a high. When I got home, I threw my stuff on the floor and immediately started writing.”

The film version was greeted warmly by audiences and critics. The New York Times said that Eastwood had made “a moving, elegiac love story.” The New York Daily News said, “On that short shelf of classic movie romances ‘Seventh Heaven,’ ‘Brief Encounter,’ ‘An Affair to Remember’ you can now place ‘The Bridges of Madison County.’”

George A. Olah, whose work won a Nobel Prize in chemistry and paved the way for more effective oil refining and ways of producing less polluting forms of gasoline, has died at age 89.

Olah died Wednesday at his Beverly Hills home, according to the University of Southern California’s Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, of which he was founding director. No cause of death was provided.

Olah’s research brought him the 1994 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his groundbreaking study of the unstable carbon molecules known as carbocations.

“Distinguished professor George Olah was a true legend in the field of chemistry,” USC President C. L. Max Nikias said in a statement Thursday. “His pioneering research fundamentally redefined the field’s landscape and will influence its scholarly work for generations to come.”

The Hungarian government offered its condolences for Olah, who fled Hungary during a 1950s Soviet crackdown on dissent.

“The country has lost a great patriot and one of the most outstanding figures of Hungarian scientific life,” said Janos Lazar, chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Observation

Olah received the Nobel Prize for his work on superacids, research that led his observation of carbocations — an unstable, fleeting chemical species that he discovered how to stabilize long enough to study its properties.

He said there was no “eureka moment” and credited the find to long hours spent in his chemistry lab, usually starting before dawn and continuing late into the night.

Renowned British artist Howard Hodgkin, whose bold paintings fused abstraction with the glorious beauty of nature, has died. He was 84.

The Tate group of galleries said Hodgkin died peacefully on Thursday at a London hospital.

Born in London in 1932, Hodgkin was evacuated to the United States as a child during World War II. Returning to Britain, he studied at Camberwell School of Art and Bath Academy of Art, where he went on to teach.

His work has been shown in solo exhibitions around the world, including major retrospectives at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and Tate Britain, London.

Many of Hodgkin’s bold, colorful works were inspired by the landscapes of India, which he visited often. Tate director Nicholas Serota said Hodgkin’s paintings “radiate the emotions of life: love, anger, vanity, beauty and companionship.”

“Howard Hodgkin was one of the great artists and colorists of his generation,” Serota said.