I have to mention one other event that occurred while I was in the hospital — the passing of Arthur Miller. There is no finer American play to me than Death of a Salesman. But I think Marilyn Berger’s obviously long-prepared obit in the NYT undervalues his subsequent work. Yes, Miller declined at some point, but most do, alas. Still, The Crucible and the less known novel Focus are works of great substance and View from the Bridge and even After the Fall have their moments as well. (I’m not much of a fan of The Misfits.) On a personal level, I met the author and playwright at a dinner party in Connecticut in the eighties and found him to be stuffy and standoffish, but I expected that.
I saw the notice in the Philly Inquirer and my first thought was that another great talent was gone (I’m startin’ to feel old).
Our high school theater dept. put on a production of The Crucible. I was mesmerized. And I will always watch any production, live or movie of Death of a Salesman.
I agree regarding Death of a Salesman. It is the finest of American plays. The Misfits is something less than it might have been.
My other favorites among American plays are O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the play in which we’re “cordially invited to George and Martha’s for an evening of fun and games.” I might as well toss in Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe to break up the “high school drama class greatest hits” feel to the group.
My favorite living playwright has been Tom Stoppard since whenever it was that I first saw The Real Thing.
When I was young I loved to read plays. And my favorite playwrights were Tenneseee Williams and Arthur Miller. Man does that date me.
I was lucky enough to see an outstanding performance of Salesman when I was much younger. Where I am from a good play is a very rare thing. A few other rare things went on that night too.
Patrick ó When I was traveling to the UK regularly in the 80′s, I was lucky enough to hit a string of several trips in a row with a new Stoppard play on the boards.
Miller’s work, and reputation, overall will undoubtedly stand the test of time.
I suppose it is that the intervening years and intervening plays/movies/books going over the same ground that soured me on Death of a Salesman. Maybe if I hadn’t seen “Save the Tiger” and “Prisoner on 2nd Avenue” and “Glengarry Glen Ross” (Jeez, did Jack Lemmon get typecast or what?) before seeing the Loman play it wouldn’t have seemed quite so cliched, and yes, I know it predated those by quite a bit so that they are the copycats. But you know how it is–I saw them first.
I enjoyed The Crucible quite a bit better, although its allegorical meaning was pretty effectively rebutted by “On the Waterfront”.
I’d take O’Neill over Miller any day. BTW, for once Google Ads has appropriate offers on the page!
Sorry to be a dark cloud, but I hope you’ll forgive me for posting the contrary view of another blogger (whose writing I often find extremely insightful): After The Thud (at the My Stupid Dog blog). I’ll repeat his acidic punchline here, but his entire essay bears, well, “attention,” so take a look: The Left would achieve some major successes in the decade and a half after The Crucible, but Miller’s splenetic anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-humanism had placed the movement on a downward spiral from which it has yet to recover.
Unlike Some…
That was a lot of fun to read, Hovig!
richard—
You’re a lucky man.
Hovig—
I read My Stupid Dog from time to time. I don’t find “stridency, prejudice, phony piety, petty vindictiveness, and a general lack of humanity” to be descriptive of All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and/or The Crucible. ‘Nuff said.
I think Miller’s later plays are only fair to middling. But, who cares? One masterpiece is enough per lifetime. And Death of a Salesman is a masterpiece, IMHO. If you don’t much like it, and you’ve only seen it in the Dustin Hoffman version, please try to get hold of the Lee J. Cobb one, or the one with Frederic March. It might change your mind.
So let me see if I get this.
Arthur Miller the Stalinist with an apartment in the city and a farm in the country is down on empty American materialist striving.
OK.
I bet he never read DeSoto. Ever.
Like all socialists he never really cared for what the proles were after. A place of their own.
It was Miller who chased the wrong values. Not Willy Loman.
In 50 years “Salesman” will be seen for the communist propaganda it is. Mammet has a similar attitude towards salesmen.
In time there will come a time when a play is written by a man or woman who likes salesmen. The contrast will then be much more obvious.
In the world of business nothing really happens until some one sells something. Nothing.
BTW I have read the play and seen the Lee J. Cobb version.
In the same vein as Richard and Hovig….
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006294
i can only imagine what comment miller would of made of your political change had you been at that party last week.
If I’d slept with Marilyn Monroe, I might be a little arrogant later myself.
(Esp. since the “so dumb she slept with the screenwriter” crack doesn’t apply to Marilyn.)
Although I agree with previous posters that Miller was essentially a lefty propogandist, in Death Of A Salesman he tapped into a deep insecurity in the American Soul (if I may be as portentious as he was) and wrote a great play, almost despite himself.
Oops. Should be portentous. Sorry.
Couldn’t agree more with M. Simon above.
I’ll add: for the antidote to “Salesman” see Whit Stilllman’s marvelous ode to the American salesman, and to America, “Barcelona.”
You want to get the American dream?
“Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” Carry Grant.
Now there was a real salesman with an American dream.
I take it Tony and Tina’s Wedding doesn’t count with this crowd, heh?
My wife and I were discussing Miller this morning, in response to Terry Teachout’s obituary in today Wall Street Journal. She has only read his work, and doesn’t think much of it. And I have to admit that on the page it can be pretty leaden. But for some reason, it plays so well! I recall seeing the great version of “Death of a Salesman” that Lee J. Cobb did for, I believe, Playhouse 90, back in the glory days of live television. It had an immediacy and power that I’ve not seen matched since. And the recent film of “The Crucible”, which Miller revised to snip out some of the more heavy-handed McCarthy allegories, is an excellent presentation of a powerful story.
I find it interesting that several of Miller’s plays have been successfully adapted as operas, most recently “View From the Bridge” with a score by William Bolcum. I guess that shows that Miller is not a great dramatist, but a great melodramatist – and I don’t mean that condescendingly, because melodrama is an art in its own right. It may be that Arthur Miller’s ultimate fate is to be the David Belasco of our day, a popular dramatist who’s remembered only because some great music was composed to libretti based on his work. But there are worse fates.
Oh, I don’t know, Knucklehead. Like Terrye, I read plays when I was young but I gravitated more to George F. Kaufman. I thought You Can’t Take It With You and The Man Who Came To Dinner were probably the funniest things I’d ever read in my (admitedly short) life. And that was long before I saw either film.
I guess I’m more in the Teachout camp. Salesman is a fine play which I’ve enjoyed every time I’ve seen it performed, but I’ll take a pass on most everything else Miller penned. Now, if you want to talk Tennessee Williams…
Jim in Chicago: I’ll second your recommendation
of “Barcelona” as the antidote. Just thinking about it brings a grin to my face.
“Dying is easy; comedy is hard.”
I was lucky enough to see Ride Down Mount Morgan with Patrick Stewart. I was pinned between my roommate at the time – who weighed in at a whopping 357 pounds – and a woman of similar bulk, so I wound up watching Act II from the standing room in the back of the theater. But it was a good play, if not great.
But why must everything be great?
From that day to this there hasn’t been a single girlfriend or wannabe girlfriend on whom I haven’t used the line “You’re beautiful against tall buidings”. And it works, believe it or not – IF your delivery matches Mr. Stewart’s.
Stopping on the street: “Ahhh, you’re beautiful against tall buildings!”
My fav among the living is Peter Schaffer, but I quote Mamet the most.
Why does Miller remind me of Saul Bellow?
PS: Is Teachout bashing the dead again? I can’t bear to look.
I understand those who object to the leftist underpinnings of the politics in “Salesman.” But the part that has always reached me about the play, and makes me love it despite its “message,” is something quite different–the poignant human element. What is so touching to me is that it is a story of thwarted love and hopes and dreams, and also one of family tragedy, despite great family love. The son Biff’s discovery of his father’s clay feet and his betrayal of the mother ends up causing the son’s own decline. I’ve always seen this as quite moving and tragic. I view “Salesman” as a particular and very emotional human story rather than a political tract, and certain great actors have managed to make the pathos in the story almost unbearable to watch.
Out of all the Miller plays I only saw The Crucible in an amateur production ñ in England. I had no idea that it had any connection with McCarthy. I just thought it was a bit analysis on mass hysteria and potential nasty consequences, but nothing terribly original. After all, we in Europe are inured to witch trials. There were too many of them to count in our history. There is also vast literature covering the subject.
From what you all write, it does not look like I missed much.
It also demonstrates the importance of play critics and all analysts of the ìserious literatureî. Without them an uninitiated viewer/reader might miss the entire message that the author is trying to sendÖ