Arthur Miller - Softcover

Bigsby, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674057082 ISBN 13: 9780674057081

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Bigsby’s gripping, meticulously researched biography of one of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights examines Miller’s refusal to name names before the House on Un-American Activities Committee, offers new insights into Miller’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe, and sheds new light on how their relationship informed Miller’s subsequent great plays.

About this title

About the Author:

Christopher Bigsby is Professor of American Studies and Director of the Arthur Miller Centre at the University of East Anglia.

From The Washington Post:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Wendy Smith With "All My Sons" in 1947 and "Death of a Salesman" in 1949, Arthur Miller announced himself as the conscience of the American theater. He wrote about the claims of the past and the price of material success at a time when many aspired to enjoy the creature comforts denied them by war and economic depression. Acclaimed as one of the nation's foremost playwrights, he remained committed to examining uncomfortable issues in his work. "The Crucible," produced at the height of postwar anti-communist agitation in 1953, boldly made Colonial witch-hunting a metaphor for redbaiting. Three years later, a week before he married the world's most famous blond bombshell, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, garnering a contempt of Congress conviction (later overturned) for his refusal to name names. It's understandable that Christopher Bigsby devotes most of his massive biography to this period of Miller's greatest fame and to the formation of the playwright's social convictions during the Depression years of his youth. It's far less understandable why the book basically ends with Miller's marriage to photographer Inge Morath in 1962, 43 years before his death in 2005. Bigsby does occasionally flash forward to discuss such important 1960s works as "After the Fall" (Miller's controversial portrait of his relationship with Marilyn Monroe) and "The Price," but these scattered snippets will merely frustrate those expecting more about the original productions and their reception. There is only a single passing mention of Miller's tenure as president of International PEN in the 1960s, when his determined advocacy for dissident writers got his works banned in the Soviet Union; it's an especially odd omission in a book that devotes so much attention to his political commitments. Even if we accept Bigsby's premise that the first half of Miller's life "was when he was being shaped," the depiction of those years is flawed. There's too much about everything from college grades to juvenile works of fiction; the more essential (and reasonably perceptive) material about Miller's tension-riddled family gets swamped. The playwright's complicated engagement with Marxism is certainly important, but endless discussions about the split between Trotskyites and Stalinists and its impact on the critical response to his work tells us nothing about why "All My Sons" and "Death of a Salesman" struck a nerve with the general public. A similar plethora of information works slightly better in the account of Miller's appearance before HUAC, making the point that few behaved with absolute purity in the messy postwar political situation. Miller testified at length about his personal beliefs, even though he surely believed they were none of HUAC's business, and he felt obliged to make the absurd claim that "The Crucible" "is not first and foremost written against McCarthyism." The playwright's marriage to Monroe is portrayed with irritating pretentiousness: "For a time her sensitivity seemed to charge the everyday with a new significance, almost as though he were, indeed, father to a child discovering the world." And grandiose, cloudy prose also mars Bigsby's critical exegeses, which echo Miller's occasionally portentous public pronouncements rather than the pithy, emotional texture of his best plays. In England, where Bigsby is director of the Arthur Miller Centre at the University of East Anglia, the playwright's reputation remained high even as it faltered in the United States during the 1970s. Well-received productions in the '80s and '90s of such later works as "The Archbishop's Ceiling" and "The Ride Down Mount Morgan" made a strong case for Miller's stature as a preeminent dramatist of the 20th century, not just the author of "Death of a Salesman." It's particularly disappointing, then, that an English scholar would choose to focus on the most familiar plays and the most publicity-drenched events, instead of aiming for an assessment of Miller's achievements and significance over the entire course of his life. Granted hours of interviews and exclusive access to Miller's personal papers, Bigsby squanders these opportunities in an unfocused, excruciatingly overdetailed yet glaringly incomplete text. He takes several slaps at his predecessor Martin Gottfried for minor factual errors, but Gottfried's 2003 biography is more judicious and far more readable.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0674057082
• ISBN 13: 9780674057081
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 749