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Arthur Miller: American Witness

By (author) John Lahr

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normal price: R 461.95

Price: R 415.95

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A great theater critic brings twentieth-century playwright Arthur Millerâ€™s dramatic story to life with bold and revealing new insights Â â€œLahrâ€™s cogent analyses are revelatory. . . . He does not reduce the work to the life, but shows how it explains the life from which it emerges.â€â€”Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal Â â€œNew Yorker critic Lahr shines in this searching account of the life of playwright Arthur Miller. . . . Itâ€™s a great introduction to a giant of American letters.â€â€”Publishers Weekly Â Distinguished theater critic John Lahr brings unique perspective to the life of Arthur Miller (1915â€“2005), the playwright who almost single-handedly propelled twentieth-century American theater to a new level of cultural sophistication. Organized around the fault lines of Millerâ€™s lifeâ€”his family, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, Elia Kazan and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Marilyn Monroe, Vietnam, and the rise and fall of Millerâ€™s role as a public intellectualâ€”this book demonstrates the synergy between Arthur Millerâ€™s psychology and his plays. Â Concentrating largely on Millerâ€™s most prolific decades of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Lahr probes Millerâ€™s early playwriting failures; his work writing radio plays during World War II after being rejected for military service; his only novel, Focus; and his succession of award-winning and canonical plays that include All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible, providing an original interpretation of Millerâ€™s work and his personality.