Synopses & Reviews
The sole and definitive biography of America's greatest living playwright.
Arthur Miller has been delivering powerful drama to the stage for decades with such masterpieces as Death of a Salesman. But, remarkably, no one has yet told the full story of Miller's own extraordinary life a rich life, much of it shrouded from public view.
To achieve this groundbreaking portrait of the artist and the man, the award-winning drama critic and biographer Martin Gottfried masterfully draws on his interviews with those who have known Miller throughout his personal and professional life, on Miller's voluminous lifelong correspondence, and on the annotated scripts and notebooks that reveal Miller's creative process in stunning detail. From Miller's childhood and adolescence in Depression-era New York City to his formative college years in Michigan...from the numerous early professional rejections to the 1947 play All My Sons that established him as a voice to be reckoned with...from his heroic defiance of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy years to his most unlikely pairing with Marilyn Monroe...from political and social activism on the world stage to an extraordinary professional vitality even as he turns 88 in October 2003 (he is still writing plays, and stage revivals and film adaptations of his classics proliferate): here is a dazzling book a literary event of the first order.
Review
"[A]n illuminating and profound picture of playwright Miller....[P]ersonal stories are refreshingly secondary in one of the rare books that makes the playwriting process comprehensible and consistently involving." Publishers Weekly
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"Gottfried strikes just the right balance between the work and the life in his judicious assessment of the great American playwright....A thorough and welcome summing-up of a towering achievement in the modern theater." Kirkus Reviews
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"Even if there were nothing in it on Monroe, even if you skim the extensive play-plot summaries, or skip them entirely, Gottfried's gift for fashioning facts into a fascinating narrative is such that the book remains compulsively readable." Jack Helbig, Booklist
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"[Gottfried's] careful analysis of the plays, woven into the fabric of the writer's very public private life, is detailed and at times revelatory." Chicago Sun-Times
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"While Miller's own interest in psychology doubtless encourages such biographical scrutiny, the dutiful Ping-Ponging between life and writings unfortunately amplifies the sense of the playwright's self-involvement and mutes the sense of his achievement." The New Yorker
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"[An] excellent biography." New York Post
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"A fascinating book....To borrow the famous line from Death of a Salesman, attention must be paid." New York Observer
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"Ambitious, opinionated, exciting....Gottfried wields his critical acumen well through full, often excellent discussions of the plays." San Francisco Chronicle
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"[Gottfried's] abilities as a journalist and drama critic serve him well. [He] lands on a single, salient theme and commits himself to exploring that fully." Boston Sunday Globe
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"[A] big, bountiful life of the playwright by a longtime New York drama critic." Philadelphia Inquirer
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"Gottfried's access to original research makes his book especially in-depth, and with the few biographies of Miller either out of print or emphasizing criticism, this is an important purchase for large theater collections." Library Journal
Synopsis
The first and definitive biography of America's greatest living playwright.
Synopsis
Arthur Miller has been delivering powerful drama to the stage for decades with such masterpieces as Death of a Salesman . But, remarkably, no one has yet told the full story of Miller's own extraordinary life-a rich life, much of it shrouded from public view. To achieve this groundbreaking portrait of the artist and the man, the award-winning drama critic and biographer Martin Gottfried masterfully draws on his interviews with those who have known Miller throughout his personal and professional life, on Miller's voluminous lifelong correspondence, and on the annotated scripts and notebooks that reveal Miller's creative process in stunning detail. From Miller's childhood and adolescence in Depression-era New York City to his formative college years in Michiganfrom the numerous early professional rejections to the 1947 play All My Sons that established him as a voice to be reckoned withfrom his heroic defiance of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy years to his most unlikely pairing with Marilyn Monroe from political and social activism on the world stage to an extraordinary professional vitality even as he turns 88 in October 2003 (he is still writing plays, and stage revivals and film adaptations of his classics proliferate): here is a dazzling book-a literary event of the first order."
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 463-464) and index.
About the Author
Martin Gottfried, winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism, has been the chief drama critic for the New York Post, Saturday Review, and Women's Wear Daily. He is the author of Sondheim, All His Jazz, Balancing Act, and Jed Harris: The Curse of Genius (a New York Times Notable Book). To quote the New York Times Book Review: "Mr. Gottfried knows his Broadway like Damon Runyon." He lives in New York City.