Arthur Miller: 1962-2005
Contents:
Christopher Bigsby dealt with the productive first half of Arthur Miller's life in the initial instalment of his biography, so why should these last dejected decades be treated to a second outsize volume? Miller's best plays — preachy democratisations of Ibsen, lumpenly prosaic despite their solemnity — were written between and After that he dwindled into an appendage of Marilyn Monroe; when they divorced in he became officially a has-been. Reviewing his new plays, as a critic remarked in , was "like going to the funeral of a man you wish you could have liked more". Once when he attempted to hire a limo, the young female receptionist gaped at him as if he were a ghost and commented to a colleague: Miller blamed the world for rejecting him.
In the glutted Reagan years, America no longer wanted to be reminded of economic fragility, or recalled to a sense of human solidarity that was in abeyance during Tom Wolfe's "Me Decade". Then when communism collapsed, Miller — like the protagonist of his play Mr Peters' Connection — recognised that "nothing I have believed has turned out to be true".
Socialist hopes expired in a "culture of appetite", embodied by the voracious Bill Clinton, who gobbled cheeseburgers and was gobbled in turn by Monica Lewinsky.
Arthur Miller: 1962-2005 by Christopher Bigsby – review
Sermonising in a wilderness, Miller complained that the contemporary theatre had "no prophetic function". The truth was ruder, and less flattering to his vatic pretensions. A theatre is a civic arena, and the people who turn up to see a performance will only go to the trouble if their own urgent contemporary concerns are being addressed. Miller, still obsessively scrapping with Elia Kazan about the conscientious dilemmas of the McCarthy years, was sidelined by history. Bigsby gamely defends the flimsiness of his later, thinner works by arguing that they are about "the construction of meaning", that most academic of activities, and suggesting that Miller had advanced "from sociology… towards ontology".
He reacted to changing fashions with resentful grumpiness. During the s he flinched from the anarchic carnival of shows such as Hair , and denounced absurdism as a flight from political engagement. It was an excellent idea, at least in theory.
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Mamet's play is the successor to Miller's, dealing with a more up-to-date form of salesmanship — the motor-mouthed peddling of illusions that sustains the new consumer economy. But on the way out, Miller opined that Mamet had "a lot to learn" and intolerantly tossed the programme in a street-corner litter bin.
His autobiography, Timebends, received the worst response of all. When it came out in , David Denby wrote in the New Republic that it had "an amorphous and sluggish feel to it". In case that wasn't enough, he summed up Miller's portrayal of Monroe as "mating with the golden-haired dream, quite a treat for a Jewish boy".
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Often it is women who are defined by their relationships with famous men, but in Miller's case, he remained linked to Monroe in the public imagination, so much so that his publishers wanted to put a picture of the blonde star, rather than Miller himself, on his memoir's front cover. At a celebration of his 80th birthday, a reporter asked him if he still dreamt of Monroe; his response was to swing a punch at the man.
This is the second instalment in Bigsby's biography of Miller. Running to pages excluding notes and index it takes up just after his split with Monroe, as he begins his much more stable and lasting relationship with Morath. Bigsby's research is thorough and he has crafted the book with care, but much of it lacks momentum.
Bigsby's first volume was as invaluable as it was readable; this second will not disappoint. It was not even much of a consolation when a block of West 49th Street in the theatre district was designated Arthur Miller Way: In this period of his life, he also became renowned for his work in support of dissident writers in Russia, Czechoslovakia, China, and elsewhere. This is the second instalment in Bigsby's biography of Miller. Miller blamed the world for rejecting him.
Perhaps that's because Miller's political commitments, while impressive, don't have the must-read lure of personal intrigue. Bigsby reveals little about the affairs that Miller did have.
The second volume of the definitive biography of one of the greatest modern playwrights, Arthur Miller ().The first volume of. Arthur Miller: [Christopher Bigsby] on www.farmersmarketmusic.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Christopher Bigsby's masterful two-volume biography of.
He mentions one that lasted for a year and hints at others. It would have been enlightening to have more details, and might have more shed light on the playwright's complex nature. For "the theme of betrayal runs throughout Miller's work", Bigsby says; and "guilt was in some way a motor force".
Surprisingly, the story gains a racy element at the very end of Miller's life.
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After his second wife's death he met a young woman called Agnes Barley at a dinner party. She didn't know much about theatre, and later she admitted that she had thought he was dead. But they hit it off and quickly became intimate, despite a year age gap Barley was He and Barley moved in together, and he left her his New York apartment in his will.
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When a New York Times reporter enquired about their relationship Miller would only say: Life is very boring without them. As for Barley, she truly loved him, it seems -- at least, five years on, the answering machine still has his voice. Anne Cunningham This year saw some remarkable debuts, along with some gems, from more experienced pens. From history to politics, popular science, nature, cookery and music, it's our guide to the best non-fiction of Ryan Nugent Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described a photography book depicting 24 hours in the life of a New York city cop as "not just a book, but almost a work of art".
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