Miller Time

"Memory inevitably romanticizes, pressing reality to recede like pain."
- Arthur Miller, Timebends

I have been tossing two books back and forth for several weeks now. My resolve to read for no less than 30 minutes a day was working out pretty well, until the performances began getting to me (I stopped running a week ago Friday) but then illness and a new project kept Miller's autobiography in my hands pretty much exclusively and at all times for the entire weekend.

I still don't know what I have or had, but I feel it finally draining out of me, leaving a hideous sore throat. Regardless, my big revelation is that I no longer hold Arthur Miller in contempt. I am sure this would be a major relief to him were he still alive. In any event, the irritation I developed during a seminar in college, one devoted to Miller, where I was once so looking forward to reading so many of his works, only to discover each one an increasingly pale copy of the one before it ... and all of his commentary ... endless commentary ...

I think that's what bothered me the most, and left me feeling I had a right to judge him not on his plays but on his edirotials and essays, defending his work, explaining his work, as though the work did not explain itself, or that we couldn't get it, and if we didn't like it, we were wrong.

Well. That was part of my problem right there, too much commentary. I should have skipped the commentary and paid more attention to the work.

In any case, I am readiing his autobiography, which I got for Christmas from Daniel. And why did Daniel give me a copy of Timebends for Christmas? Because I asked for it (it was a Secret Santa thing.) So why would I ask for a biography I wouldn't possibly want?

Uhm. I don't know. The line on the form said, "The book I would most like to read but don't own is ..?" Maybe I thought it said "least" but that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, I think I was trying to break something inside of myself, and just wrote it down. Two days before Christmas, and I had a copy.

Recently GLTF announced they would, for the first time, produce The Crucible. The work I have always felt stands out as Miller's true classic. The exception. I still doubt Salesman will be performed in another hundred years, but Crucible? They will be performing that play on Mars.

And so I had reason to research. So I have read. And I have kept reading. This guy's life is fascinating.

Another work Daniel opened up to me was To Kill a Mockingbird. "You don't really know a person till you put on their shoes and walk around in their skin for a while."

Once the season was announced, I was reminded again how much my father claims he hates Arthur Miller. I will get around to asking him why (I think I can guess) but before that day, I think I needed to see if my own distrust of him was misplaced.

Miller, not my dad.