Arthur Miller

[Daniel del Real]

I just finished reading Death of a Salesman, my first trip into Miller's plays and I have to say, Damn he is good!
A little entry here:


Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005)[1][2] was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include awards-winning plays such as All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible.
Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.



His Plays

No Villain (1936)
They Too Arise (1937, based on No Villain)
Honors at Dawn (1938, based on They Too Arise)
The Grass Still Grows (1938, based on They Too Arise)
The Great Disobedience (1938)
Listen My Children (1939, with Norman Rosten)
The Golden Years (1940)
The Man Who Had All the Luck (1940)[46]
The Half-Bridge (1943)
All My Sons (1947)
Death of a Salesman (1949)
An Enemy of the People (1950, based on Henrik Ibsen's play 'An Enemy of the People')
The Crucible (1953)
A View from the Bridge (1955)
A Memory of Two Mondays (1955)
After the Fall (1964)
Incident at Vichy (1964)
The Price (1968)
Fame (television play, 1970)
The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972)
The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977)
The American Clock (1980)
Playing For Time (television play, 1980)
Elegy for a Lady (short play, 1982, first part of Two Way Mirror)
Some Kind of Love Story (short play, 1982, second part of Two Way Mirror)
I Think About You a Great Deal (1986)
Playing for Time (stage version, 1985)
I Can’t Remember Anything (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)
Clara (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)
The Last Yankee (1991)
The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991)
Broken Glass (1994)
Mr Peter’s Connections (1998)
Resurrection Blues (2002)
Finishing the Picture (2004)


A much larger bio is available at wiki.
As always I'd like to hear your opinions on which are your favorite Miller's plays and discuss his legacy in the history of literature.

[Flower]

Daniel,
You should try and read his biography "Timebends".
Its very interesting and boy has he met very famous and cool people in his life!

[lionel]

You should try and read his biography "Timebends".


I found Timebends depressing in some respects, such as when Miller says he re-watched Fellini's La Dolce Vita, and was really disappointed. So did I, and wondered what I saw in it the first time. However, I have the DVD of Volker Schlondorff's Death of a Salesman, have watched it more than once, and could easily watch it several more times. Miller had a way of commenting on the Zeitgeist that was both enthralling and novel.

[lionel]

I found Timebends depressing in some respects, such as when Miller says he re-watched Fellini's La Dolce Vita, and was really disappointed. So did I, and wondered what I saw in it the first time. However, I have the DVD of Volker Schlondorff's Death of a Salesman, have watched it more than once, and could easily watch it several more times. Miller had a way of commenting on the Zeitgeist that was both enthralling and novel.

Dr Tony Shaw (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/)

[Liam]

...Miller says he re-watched Fellini's La Dolce Vita, and was really disappointed. So did I, and wondered what I saw in it the first time.
La Dolce Vita is easily the most phantasmagoric work of Fellini's "middle" years. Not as colorful as Juliet of the Spirits or Casanova by a long shot, but definitely a deeper and more profound meditation on the perpetual sense of displacement and ennui among the modern-day Western intelligentsia. Personally, I loved it.

[Clarissa]

If anyone has read Philip Roth's The Human Stain, and I guess many have, try and get hold of Arthur Miller's novel Focus, written shortly after WW II. An interesting take on ethnic identity. Probably only to be found in out of the way secondhand bookshops.
I found Timebends interesting for the politics and the different attitudes to the McCarthy era. A nmber of my 'heroes' proved to have clay feet - Elia Kazan for one. The Crucible was Miller's brilliant theatrical metaphor for the witchhunts of the period.

[lionel]

La Dolce Vita is easily the most phantasmagoric work of Fellini's "middle" years. Not as colorful (duh! it's black-and-white) as Juliet of the Spirits or Casanova by a long shot, but definitely a deeper and more profound (than the other two) meditation on the perpetual sense of displacement and ennui among the modern-day Western intelligentsia. Personally, I loved it.

Don’t get me wrong, as I loved it originally too, and for more or less the reasons you mention. (For some reason, though, Satyricon scared the shit out of me.)


[Just goes to show, I guess...]

I don’t know what it does show: on the second viewing I found it dated and tedious, but it may well have been the mood I was in. As I have the DVD, I may well summon the strength to watch it again, and will no doubt see something different again.


The Crucible was Miller's brilliant theatrical metaphor for the witchhunts of the period.

Yes, and they’re still going on in a sense: ‘Support the free market or we’ll call you a dinosaur, say you’re completely unrealistic, ostracize you’, etc. McCarthy never really died, he just changed his vocabulary.

http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/ (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/)

[Howard]

Death of a Salesman is an indestructible play, which never fails to make an impact, both on the page and (especially) in performance. I've seen it twice on stage, many years ago with Warren Mitchell as Willy Loman, and a couple of years ago with Brian Dennehy, and in both cases the force of the play came through superbly. The Volker Schlondorff film has a less than ideal Willy Loman in Dustin Hoffman, but such is the strength of the play that it's still very powerful.

I'm not sure that Miller ever equalled Salesman, though The Crucible comes close.

Timebends is one of the best autobiographies I've ever read.