Playwright's Death

Arthur Miller has died. He was 89.

Arthur Miller was a Michigan alumn. I didn't know that until orientation day at Umich. They slipped in his name along with James Earl Jones and Madonna (who didn't finish) and that other astronaut who supposedly planted a Michigan flag on the moon (presumably, it's still there, but who's checking?). I think, out of the group of freshmen I was in, I was the only one who was impressed.

I don't think they'll give you an English Lit degree in Michigan if you didn't read "Death of a Salesman". It is the quintessential Miller play: morose, frustrating, modern-day tragic. It's supposed to be about the death of the American Dream (a prevalent theme in early-50s drama), but it is understood and accepted everywhere because all of us, American or not, identify with Miller's protagonist. There'll always be a Willy Loman in your life, the man who tries his best with the most honorable intentions, but gets nowhere.

Personally, I've always preferred Tennessee Williams to Arthur Miller, my favorite being "The Iceman Cometh". Williams is a lot more poetic, although his women are always a tad too overwrought (as seen through a gay man's lens, I suppose it's not quite inaccurate) but there's always a vulnerability that I liked, that I empathised with. Miller's men are hard, burdened, occupied and women are more often than not merely supporting roles.

But, being in a school where he went to, walking through halls he probably walked in years ago, you can't help but think of him a lot. I attended a reading for my playwriting teacher's new play, while upstairs, Arthur Miller was sitting in on the opening of a new space for experimental theatre. In her play, my teacher wrote a few lines gushing about "that playwright? the famous one? the one married to that famous actress?", the girl playing the character fanning herself in anticipation. We all knew who she was talking about. His presence permeates the walls of the Frieze building, where most theater classes are held. He was a much loved and much respected man at the university. There, he was so much more than the man who married Marilyn Monroe.

I guess Michigan Daily will write a page-long obit on this alumn of ours. (Miller wrote for the paper when he was there) And the opening of the building they planned to call the Arthur Miller Theatre (or is it completed already?) will be that much more poignant. The man's gone, and all we have left are his plays. His words, his American Dream realized.