HERE’S THE FIRST FEW SENTENCES — — Winter’s first snow spun in from the distant ocean, whirling through the Narrows and across the river to fall upon the city. It piled into small drifts within the sheltered angles of the El’s pillars and lay as powdered mica an the grimy sidewalks until the scuffing of many feet reduced it to muddy rivulets trickling along littered gutters.
— ‘Wait For Tomorrow’ is written with the same high degree of skill, the same sharp realism that has characterized all of Wilder’s books; and it has the same sort of glamorous background as ‘Written on the Wind’. Yet this is an even more mature and confident Wilder, masterfully laying bare a sophisticated, degenerate society that will be universally fascinating, no matter how appalling. Wilder’s world is this dynamic story is New York City, the high-tension capital of disenchantment; and Mexico City, the last refuge of the rich and corrupt who fled from Europe during the war. There they wait for tomorrow and live out their passionate, depraved todays in an atmosphere of bought-and-paid-for splendor. Wilder depicts his fabulous characters with a bright and polished realism. There is an exiled king, his indiscriminately passionate mistress, his unprincipled majordomo, an absolutely ruthless international financier, a Texas oilman with valuable connections. These are people whose techniques for survival make them seem like amoral animals in a highly mechanized jungle. Contrasted to them are a tragic young French girl, helpless in this swift vortex, and Slade Compton, a newspaper reporter, fighting to preserve one last shred of principle. No matter how you may regard these people, their story is told with the strength, the compelling power, that is the trademark of a magnificent writer.
