Synopses & Reviews
To celebrate the centennial of his birth, the collected plays of Americas greatest twentieth-century dramatist in a beautiful bespoke hardcover edition
In the history of postwar American art and politics, Arthur Miller casts a long shadow as a playwright of stunning range and power whose works held up a mirror to America and its shifting values. The Penguin Arthur Miller celebrates Millers creative and intellectual legacy by bringing together the breadth of his plays, which span the decades from the 1930s to the new millennium. From his quiet debut, The Man Who Had All the Luck, and All My Sons, the follow-up that established him as a major talent, to career hallmarks like The Crucible and Death of a Salesman, and later works like Mr. Peters Connections and Resurrection Blues, the range and courage of Millers moral and artistic vision are here on full display.
This lavish bespoke edition, specially produced to commemorate the Miller centennial, is a must-have for devotees of Millers work. The Penguin Arthur Miller will ensure a permanent place on any bookshelf for the full span of Millers extraordinary dramatic career.
Review
“Here we find the true compassion and catharsis that are as essential to our society as water and fire and babies and air. I remember walking and running and jumping out of the theater after seeing
Death of a Salesman, like a child in the morning, because Miller awakened in me the taste for all that must be—the empathy and love for the least of us, out of which bursts a gratitude for the poetry of these characters and the greatness of their creator.”
—Philip Seymour Hoffman
“His plays and his conscience are a cold burning force.”
—Edward Albee
“You can usually tell if a writers loves actors or not by the parts he gives you. He gives you tap dances. He gives you arias.”
—Dustin Hoffman
“[Death of a Salesman] was our story that we did not know until we heard it.”
—David Mamet
“Arthur Miller is a playwright for all seasons and all nations.”
—Christopher Bigsby
"The greatest playwright of the 20th Century."
—Vaclav Havel
"Writing meant, for him, an effort to locate in the human species a counterforce to the randomness of victimisation."
—Salman Rushdie
"He was so honest and a man of rare integrity in his writing."
—Harold Pinter
"Arthur was the last of the three great theatrical voices of the American century - O'Neill, Williams, Miller."
—David Hare
"[Miller] has looked with compassion into the hearts of some ordinary Americans and quietly transferred their hope and anguish to the theatre."
—Brooks Atkinson
Synopsis
Arthur Miller’s penultimate play, Resurrection Blues, is a darkly comic satirical allegory that poses the question: What would happen if Christ were to appear in the world today? In an unidentified Latin American country, General Felix Barriaux has captured an elusive revolutionary leader. The rebel, known by various names, is rumored to have performed miracles throughout the countryside. The General plans to crucify the mysterious man, and the exclusive television rights to the twenty-four-hour reality-TV event
have been sold to an American network for $25 million. An allegory that asserts the interconnectedness of our actions and each person’s culpability in world events, Resurrection Blues is a comedic and tragic satire of precarious morals in our media-saturated age.
About the Author
Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915 and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1963), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972) and The American Clock. He has also written two novels, Focus (1945), and The Misfits, which was filmed in 1960, and the text for In Russia (1969), Chinese Encounters (1979), and In the Country (1977), three books of photographs by his wife, Inge Morath. More recent works include a memoir, Timebends (1987), and the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), Broken Glass (1993), which won the Olivier Award for Best Play of the London Season, and Mr. Peter's Connections (1998). His latest book is On Politics and the Art of Acting. Miller was granted with the 2001 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and in 1949 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.