Arthur Miller: The Problematic Farmer Scholar

For our blog this week, we chose to discuss the playwright and author Arthur Miller. Here is a link to the interview that we are going to examine in our post:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4369/the-art-of-theater-no-2-arthur-miller.

In the introduction to the interview, the interviewers discuss in length the simplistic and humble living that Miller has established. They discuss the “white farmhouse” that Miller lives in with his family and how they “found the playwright, hammer in hand, standing in dim light, amid lumber, tools, and plumbing equipment.” They go on to say that, “He welcomed us, a tall, rangy, good-looking man with a weathered face and sudden smile, a scholar-farmer in horn-rimmed glasses and high work shoes.”

Miller is portrayed throughout the duration of the interview as a humble and reasonable man, whose approach to his own literary technique and literary achievement are both honest and truthful. Miller discusses his works objectively as though they are simple accomplishments, rather than the mass successes they actually are. He elaborates on the differences between writing plays and writing short stories, and denotes his opinions on each.

Miller discusses the relationship between classic and contemporary literature, as well as what must be done to bridge the gap between the two. He discusses as a young playwright, admiring the styles and “blank template” that is often associated with Greek theatre. That is to say, that to Arthur Miller Greek Theatre exists as a simulacrum. A representation of a representation or as a copy without an original. Through these templates, he is able to create his works. Arthur Miller also discusses the arbitrary nature of writing itself, more specifically in the art of prose.

Miller considers the oppositional binary between spoken word (theatre) versus written word (short story). Miller discusses how subjects that are “harder to write” translate better into plays. When writing a short story, in which Miller conveys more of his “simpler” ideas, he feels guilt associated with not writing plays. Miller also discusses how mistakes are more plainly visible in plays than in short stories, where audiences are more capable of deciphering mistakes than a reader would.

He also discusses the idea of a hero and how a hero is created within a play. He says that all experience is “schematic” in that the authors of plays do not often let the characters remove themselves from the dreadfulness that is their world. The hero is perceived as such because he offers some form of “enlightenment” from the despair. This often makes theatre highly predictable.

He discusses his distaste for the lack of tragedy in common theatre. Like how Oedipus breaks a taboo, or in Lear when two of his daughters kill himself. The hero’s crime must be civilizing; the crime must be something that goes against his own world. It is predictable because in the beginning, whatever that crime is, is established right away, and we know that this is what is going to happen later.

Miller appears to view himself as an authority as a playwright, but not as an author. He is almost discrediting the art of being an author, in that it is more simplistic than being a playwright. He is oversimplifying when he does not consider individual skill. He removes himself from his quaint country home into an edifice separated from his habitual life: his wife, his daughter, his horses.

He views himself as a man who writes plays, but at the end of the day, still a man. He is different because he refuses to accept his position as “Arthur Miller, the playwright.” He is the creator of The Crucible or Death of a Salesman, but he prefers to keep his writing life separate from the rest of his life. He doesn’t want the position where he lives his life thinking constantly of his writing. Sometimes he wants to view something like the sunrise as any other man, not just the author.

On his influence by other playwrights, he says that he is not intentionally influenced, but it still happens because he has read their plays.

When asked what he is writing next he says that he has several things started in a very casual manner. He is not pretentious about his work. He conceptualizes his art, as in literature, in a way that shows that writing is very rigid, there is a formula for it, and it should not be worshipped. In regards to his short stories, he explains that there is a distinct manner in which he writes. He is discrediting himself.

The interviewer asks him specifically, “What do you think happened in New York?” He answers by saying, “Something I never thought could happen. The play was never judged as a play at all. Good or bad, I would never know what it was from what I read about it, only what it was supposed to have been.” While Miller seems to be discrediting his role as an author, at the exact same time, he is giving the position that he understands his work’s entire story presented from beginning to end.