Friday, September 07, 2007

Miller Killer

In "Death Of A Phony," yet another right-wing piece kicking Arthur Miller's corpse, Thomas Lifson attacks the playwright for his politics and his hypocrisy.

Fine. Go at it. But I found the opening lines odd:
I must confess that I never liked playwright Arthur Miller's work, even though I never really publicly criticized it. As an Ivy-educated, Ivy-employed intellectual, I was supposed to think he was deep. All the right people agreed on that point. So I sat through performances of his most famous work, Death of a Salesman, on several occasions, in the company of my parents at first, and as a season ticket holder at a couple of repertory theatres in adulthood. But I always found Death to be tedious and pretentious. The author must have been a rather unpleasant man, I would find myself musing during the seemingly endless performances.
As I've noted before, in America, Miller is treated by highbrow critics as middlebrow, which is about the worst thing you can call anyone. They think his work is stilted and prosaic, and does nothing imaginative in form or content.

In fact, it's the middle-class, middlebrow audience that's clutched him to their bosom. He's one of the few Broadway playwrights whom the average citizen can name, and his work, particularly Death Of A Salesman and The Crucible, gets revived in regular venues throughout the nation because it still holds the stage for most people, not because they've been told it's good for them.

Maybe if Lifson had paid more attention in the Ivy League, he'd have noticed them saying Miller writes bad melodrama for the bourgeoisie. And maybe then he could have enjoyed Miller more, knowing by liking this out-of-fashion earnest liberal, he was striking a blow against the presumptuous intelligentsia.

4 Comments:

Blogger New England Guy said...

I see. Mr Lifson gets to broadcast his Ivy creds while disdaining it at the same time. Of course what good is having your cake if you can't eat it too.

6:41 AM, September 07, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

First of all, Lifson is quoting (out of context, in most places) the Vanity Fair article on Miller's Down Syndrome son, which, I am loathe to admit because I hate Vanity Fair, is actually a pretty decent and balanced version of this tragedy in Miller's life. Yes, Miller institutionalized his son, but this was 1966, and that is what most people did, and they also used the term "mongoloid" back then. Yes, Miller behaved quite badly in his private life and quite well in most of his public life - this makes him human and fallible, and hardly a monster, nor does his behavior toward his son, however incorrect and insensitive, diminish his behavior toward the HUAC. And finally, The Crucible is a "crude allegory" for the HUAC trials? It is a perfect allegory and a nearly perfect play. To paraphrase Shakespeare and O'Neill, Miller did hold up the mirror to nature. Sorry if Lifson does not like what he saw reflected there. Doesn't make it less honest or less powerful.

11:48 AM, September 07, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There's an obvious problem with using the Salem witch trials as an allegory for the HUAC hearings. Critics noted this fifty years ago and let me repeat it: There really were no witches.

1:14 PM, September 07, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But on the other hand, HUAC hearings were as successful in stopping communism as the witch trials were in stopping witchcraft

10:19 AM, September 08, 2007  

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