Death of the Death of a Salesman Author

Nick Gillespie | February 11, 2005

Playwright Arthur Miller is dead at age 89.

He's best known for what is quite possibly the most anti-capitalist, overrated, and incoherent (scroll down) major American literary work, Death of a Salesman, which has provided armies of actors--including the Robert Earl Hughes of thespians, Lee J. Cobb--with enough scenery to chew for a 1,000 years, Seinfeld with a recurring punchline (Jerry regularly referred to George as "Biff"), and critics of capitalism with an easy symbol of the awfulness of markets.

Comments

|2.11.05 @ 12:06PM|#

Funny, I thought Gillespie would be all over how the Crucible was an important wake up call for civil/constitutional rights protection, and how ironic it is that 50 years later we have the same excesses and climate under the specter of terrorism, rather than the specter of Witches/Communists.

Lee J. Cobb was great as the bigot in 12 angry men.

pococurante|2.11.05 @ 12:10PM|#

Attention must be paid!

|2.11.05 @ 12:13PM|#

The Crucible OTOH was great. Wouldn't Death of a Playwright be a more succinct title, or too obvious? :)

digamma|2.11.05 @ 12:14PM|#

All My Sons is the better version of Death of a Salesman. AMS is about how American capitalism can, but by no means necessarily must, corrupt people's morals.

Jesse Walker|2.11.05 @ 12:23PM|#

I'm not a Miller fan, but I was pleasantly surprised last year when I saw a performance of one of his usually neglected plays, The Price. It offered much more ambiguity than, say, The Crucible, and was open to multiple readings; the interpretation that seemed most obvious to me was almost Randian. Surely that wasn't the moral Miller had in mind, but bravo to him for writing a drama that's open enough for me to find it there.

|2.11.05 @ 12:25PM|#

I have a decidedly lowbrow question....

Although outliving her by more than 40 years, do you think Miller ever forgot his wedding night with Marilyn?

|2.11.05 @ 12:31PM|#

I never read D.O.S. as an anti-capitalist screed, but as an attack on the organization-man mentality and the notion that one's duty in life is to be accepted by the herd.

|2.11.05 @ 12:40PM|#

ditto. no pun intended...

|2.11.05 @ 1:14PM|#

I can muster only pity for someone who would sacrifice appreciation for great art on the alter of political correctness.

Gene Healy|2.11.05 @ 2:08PM|#

Contra Nick, I never read Death of a Salesman as an anti-capitalist tract, though certainly Arthur Miller's political views would suggest he might have intended it as one. Willy Loman's failing is that he embraces, and teaches his sons, a phony approach to success. You need to be "well-liked." According to Willy, prosperity is the result of superficial qualities--if you're a backslapping, gladhanding schmuck, you'll go far in a free enterprise system. Contrast that to neighbor Charley, from whom Willy has to sponge off of to pay his bills. Charley's an honest small businessman "who works hard and plays by the rules" as Bill Clinton used to put it. His son Bernard--"liked, but not well liked" in Willy's estimation--studies hard while Biff plays football. Biff steals himself out of every job he's ever had. Towards the end of the play, Bernard's getting ready to argue a case before the Supreme Court. Lesson? Smart guys who work hard get ahead. Clowns who care more about how popular they are, don't. Whatever Miller's intentions, this doesn't play well as an indictment of capitalism. Biff should have run for office.

gaius marius|2.11.05 @ 2:33PM|#

i largely agree w/ mr healy. have to say that i think you missed the majority of the play, mr gillespie.

|2.11.05 @ 2:36PM|#

"...calls selling stocks "the white-boy way of slinging crack rock."
Another character, a brokerage-house recruiter played by Ben Affleck, smugly proclaims,
"Anyone who tells you that money is the root of evil doesn't fucking have any."

i did love those two lines, lol

i would have to add that this was probably one of, hell the best, Affleck role ever. he was only in the film what 5/10 minutes.

Gene Healy at February 11, 2005 02:08
...a phony approach to success. You need to be "well-liked." According to Willy, prosperity is the result of superficial qualities--if you're a backslapping, gladhanding schmuck, you'll go far in a free enterprise system...
that seems to be the norm at most of the companies (7-10) i've worked for, small or large. if your liked, regardless of performance, you get opportunities. is it fair, of course not, its just the way it is!!!

|2.11.05 @ 2:39PM|#

All My Sons is the better version of Death of a Salesman. AMS is about how American capitalism can, but by no means necessarily must, corrupt people's morals.

Whoa. For a minute there I mentally mixed up All My Sons with the old TV show My Three Sons. Brain cramp.

|2.11.05 @ 3:13PM|#

I can muster only pity for someone who would sacrifice appreciation for great art on the alter of political correctness.

Yeah, if they teach it in American high schools, it must be great art.

I'm not drama critic (!), but I remember Salesman as being a kind of family tragedy with a little Marxist fairy dust sprinkled over it. That an older man would come to regard his life as a failure I think isn't anything peculiar to capitalism, no doubt there have been sheepherders throughout time who've finally dispaired at their own lack of accomplishment and the idiot litter they've raised.

Maybe I'm just a callous bastard but I've never really found myself making an emotional connection to any of Miller's works. His characters seem to me to be a little on the wooden side, especially compared to the creations of a playwright like his contemporary, Tennessee Williams.

But he certainly wasn't the worst writer to come down the pike, and god knows it must have taken near-superhuman strength to keep from going totally nuts when he was married to Marilyn Monroe.

|2.11.05 @ 3:58PM|#

I chime in with Mr. Healy and Number 6. I haven't seen DoS in about six years, but I recall Willy Loman being a pathetic character not because he was a victim of unbridled consumerist culture, but because he chose to make it his faith. Because Miller provided characters who chose alternatives (Bernard) I came away with the overall interpretation that we have the power to opt out of the hype, and we can actually control the acquisitive hype, to some degree, by choosing not to participate in it, if that's our desire.

Fine by me.

|2.11.05 @ 4:14PM|#

Gene Healy hits it right on the nose.

nSignificant misses the mark. Everyone knows the greatest performances by Affleck are in Dazed and Confused and Mallrats.

"Like the back of a Volkswagen?"

Tim Cavanaugh|2.11.05 @ 4:38PM|#

But he certainly wasn't the worst writer to come down the pike, and god knows it must have taken near-superhuman strength to keep from going totally nuts when he was married to Marilyn Monroe

As Elia Kazan, one of the first friends to put the horns on Miller, said when they got engaged, "Arthur, you don't marry a girl like that." Pick up a copy of A View From the Bridge and you may find yourself less sure that he was not, in fact, the worst writer to come down the pike.

FWIW, Miller's book Salesman In Beijing argues that DOAS was not an anti-capitalist tract. Miller disagrees at several points with Chinese who want to read it that way, and makes the case that Willie would have come to a bad end even if he had not been a rootless victim of the fatcats who exploit the laboring classes. I don't remember the specifics of his argument. The only part of the book that sticks with me is that the line "I want to talk to Bill face-to-face" became in Chinese "I want to talk to Bill mountain-through-an-open-door."

|2.11.05 @ 5:12PM|#

I'm in with no.6, dhex & healey.

The play was so much about the main characters' pathetic vapidity.

Consider the name's, for instance.

Loman...Low Man
Biff...Stereotypical brainless jock name
Happy...who names their kid 'Happy'?
Bernard...as in St. Bernard

I never saw it as anticapitalist because the Charley was certainly industrious and successful enough, as was Bernard.

I saw it as anti-"having a fucked up, idiotic view of life" or anti-"misplaced priorities". But not anti-capitalist.

|2.11.05 @ 6:14PM|#

Mo at February 11, 2005 04:14 PM
point taken, forget about those two.
"chasing amy" was pretty decent.

retraction!!!
that was his best 5 minutes in a film.

|2.11.05 @ 6:20PM|#

Leftist that it may be, Miller's work is so good as commentary on (cliche alert) the Human Condition, that it transcends the political stuff.

|2.11.05 @ 8:56PM|#

Wow, Tim. That was interesting and obscure. Not to mention a really intricate way of telling Nick he's wrong.

Tim Cavanaugh|2.11.05 @ 9:12PM|#

It occurs to me now that there is an absolutely airtight reading of Death of a Salesman: It's not about capitalism at all; it's about Jewish assimilation. Willy is obsessed with being well-liked, ie, being perceived as a gladhanding WASP. He gives his son an absolute WASP name like Biff, doesn't understand why he's never fully accepted, is baffled that he can spend his whole life playing the game (according to what he thinks are the rules) and end up with nothing. On the flipside, Bernard is the stereotypical studious Jewish youth, and most shamefully (in Willy's self-hating mind), he doesn't care whether people see him that way. Willy is still in thrall to the obsolete delusions of the landed gentry: He sees wealth as a zero-sum game and thinks success lies in working your way into the claustrophobic confines of the upper class. He can't even conceive of the dynamic, capitalist, forward-looking model of success Bernard represents. In fact, his notion of success isn't to be a captain of capitalism at all, but to be a barely tolerated middleman.

Wackiness ensues...

s.m. koppelman|2.11.05 @ 11:43PM|#

Does anyone else ever get the feeling that Mr. Gillespie's just doing this "libertarian" thing until he gets the chance to do something more in line with his worldview, like head up the WSJ editorial page, or round up all the trade unionists?

|2.12.05 @ 1:19AM|#

Jewish assimilation and obsolescence, Tim? It seems like you read Ulysses into everything.

|2.12.05 @ 2:30AM|#

Pick up a copy of 'A View From the Bridge' and you may find yourself less sure that he was not, in fact, the worst writer to come down the pike.

At your recommendation I probably won't be picking it up, but implying that he's in the running for 'worst writer' is like say this or that recording artist is the worst singer ever. I can walk across the street to karaoke night at the local bar and prove you wrong in about 30 seconds. Similarly, try reading a few novels that came out of the "writers school" movement back in the 80s & 90s and tell me that doesn't induce the sort of headaches that doctors don't even have names for.

Tim Cavanaugh|2.12.05 @ 2:53PM|#

but implying that he's in the running for 'worst writer' is like say this or that recording artist is the worst singer ever. I can walk across the street to karaoke night at the local bar

Which is why I loathe all those lists of "Worst Songs/Albums/Bands/etc. of all time"... That and the fact that they always pick on absolutely safe targets--mostly one-hit wonders who now have no credibility or selling power (though their one hits are almost always more deserving of spots on a best-ever list than a worst-ever list).