Tao of Pauly

Death of a Playwright

"Dislocation, maybe, is part of our uneasiness. It implants the feeling that nothing is really permanent." - Arthur Miller

Thanks to Jason Flowers who sent me the quote. If you do not know, Arthur Miller died the other day. I wandered over to Grubby's poker blog to see what he had to say about a fellow playwright. It started out good and then Grubby drifted into tales about his festering addiction to slots since he moved to Las Vegas.

There is some decent coverage out there. Make sure you read:

• Arthur Miller, 1915-2005 (Slate)
• An Arthur Miller Reader (Salon.com)
• Arthur Miller (Village Voice)
• Arthur Miller (San Francisco Chronicle)
• My Friend Arthur Miller by Harold Pinter (BBC News)

I read two of his plays in high school... Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. I acted in one scene from Death of a Salesmen and I know that Haley performed in a production of The Crucible. I found myself rereading Death of a Salesman on the subway en route to work on Wall Street. Yeah, the crumbling American Dream in a play format was the last thing I needed when I began to question my reasoning for working for The Man.

Arthur Miller had a grasp of the working class and was plugged into the inner mind of Americans more so than many of his contemporaries. While Neil Simon penned comedy dramas, Miller wrote hard-nosed dramas. I wish I could say more about the guy that hasn't been said already. He spoke his mind and people hated him for that. He wouldn't rat out his friends during the Red Scare. And he used to bang Marylin Monroe. He's the cat's balls.

I read some of his work. It moved me. Some of his themes of how his main characters were internally flawed has influenced some of my writing indirectly. The world has lost a real writer.