Publishers Weekly
09/12/2022
New Yorker critic Lahr (Tennessee Williams) shines in this searching account of the life of playwright Arthur Miller (1915–2005). Lahr’s vivid portrait begins with Miller’s youth, first in Harlem then Brooklyn, as an underachieving student who couldn’t get into college. Miller was eventually accepted to the University of Michigan, where his enrollment was contingent on him having $500 in savings; when that was drained, Miller risked expulsion until he entered a university writing competition with a cash prize in 1936. For reasons unclear even to Miller, he decided to write a play, No Villains, which won second place and set him on a path to greatness. The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944) became his “first play to open on Broadway,” and All My Sons, three years later, earned him acclaim ahead of the 1949 debut of Death of a Salesman (which is performed almost every day somewhere, Lahr notes). Lahr elucidates Miller’s creative process, and discusses how Marilyn Monroe stirred his imagination (he wrote her into an unfinished play after their first encounter) and his choice to challenge McCarthyism with The Crucible. Lahr’s at his best using small moments to illuminate his subject, as when the 16-year-old Miller realized the depths of his father’s impoverishment when his father asked him for a quarter to pay his subway fare. It’s a great introduction to a giant of American letters. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
Lahr’s cogent analyses [in Arthur Miller] are revelatory but not surgical, and his sympathy never cloys. He does what a good literary biographer must do: He does not reduce the work to the life, but shows how it explains the life from which it emerges. He is an investigative reporter, a profiler of personality, mind and character, and a critic who understands drama on the page and in the house.”—Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal“His plays, although rooted in the personal as John Lahr establishes, can still disclose truths about the political world that might otherwise be denied.”—John Stokes, Times Literary SupplementNamed by the New Yorker as a Best Book of 2022“It is a tapestry rich with personal as well as public detail, but it also makes irrefutable the argument (sometimes opposed) that Miller’s Jewishness was foundational to his writing.”—John Nathan, Jewish Chronicle“New Yorker critic Lahr shines in this searching account of the life of playwright Arthur Miller. . . . It’s a great introduction to a giant of American letters.”—Publishers Weekly“An engaging summary of a celebrated and checkered career.”—Kirkus Reviews“In this succinct and gorgeously written portrait, the former New Yorker drama critic and award-winning biographer of Tennessee Williams offers a keen psychological appraisal of Miller’s works, and of Miller himself.”—Julia Klein, Boston Globe“John Lahr’s slender, sharp biography offers an engaging account of the playwright’s life, beginning with his New York childhood. Lahr also provides a penetrating interpretation of Arthur Miller’s canonical works.”—Christian Science Monitor, “November’s 10 Best Books”“Beautifully written. . . . Lahr’s latest book is the achievement of a fine and mature scholar, and the volume has the interpretive sensitivity, scholarly scruple, narrative energy, and cultural depth to make it one of the major coordinates in Miller studies.”—Matthew Roudané, Tennessee Williams Annual Review“In this instructive, well-wrought interpretative biography, Lahr illuminates the enduring contributions Miller made to cultural affairs, at home and abroad. This insightful, accessible presentation will captivate Miller scholars and novices alike.”—H. I. Einsohn, Choice“With this admirably brief book, Mr. Lahr, a prominent theater critic, delivers a no-filler biography that still leaves room for his keen critical insights.”—Kurt Wenzel, East Hampton Star“No one writes about playwrights and the theater the way John Lahr does. In this probing, brilliantly insightful, and also deeply readable and entertaining book, he offers unique insight into how Miller’s mind works, and how the details of his biography impacted his body of work.”—Sarah Ruhl, MacArthur Prize–winning playwright“Lahr lets us see the great American playwright with new eyes. After his highly acclaimed Tennessee Williams biography, Lahr scores a second smash hit with Arthur Miller. No one writes more perceptively about the twentieth-century theater than John Lahr.”—John Guare, playwright, Six Degrees of Separation“A superbly written, impeccably researched biography from the great John Lahr. The close relationship between Miller and his plays is detailed and sympathetic. A classic book about a classic American playwright.”—André Bishop, artistic director, Lincoln Center Theater“In Arthur Miller, the great critic and biographer John Lahr has found a perfect subject: complex, gifted, a man of his times. This is biography-as-collaboration, and utterly captivating.”—Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize–winning essayist and author
Pulitzer Prize–winning essayist and author Hilton Als
In Arthur Miller, the great critic and biographer John Lahr has found a perfect subject: complex, gifted, a man of his times. This is biography-as-collaboration, and utterly captivating.”
playwright and MacArthur Fellow Sarah Ruhl
No one writes about playwrights and the theater the way John Lahr does. In this probing, brilliantly insightful, and also deeply readable and entertaining book, he offers unique insight into how Miller’s mind works, and how the details of his biography impacted his body of work.”
André Bishop
A superbly written, impeccably researched biography from the great John Lahr. The close relationship between Miller and his plays is detailed and sympathetic. A classic book about a classic American playwright.”
John Guare
Lahr lets us see the great American playwright with new eyes. After his highly acclaimed Tennessee Williams biography, Lahr scores a second smash hit with Arthur Miller. No one writes more perceptively about the twentieth century theater than John Lahr.”
FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile
In 1949, the massively successful play DEATH OF A SALESMAN took Broadway by storm, forever changing American theater and its author Arthur Miller’s life. With rapt enthusiasm and fine attention to detail, narrator John Rubinstein leads listeners through this biography of Miller. Starting from his childhood, which was shadowed by the Great Depression, the narrative moves through his drive for fame; his theater career; his changeable politics; and his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. In the 1950s, he defined his status as an iconic cultural figure by refusing to name names when testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee, an experience that inspired his play THE CRUCIBLE. Rubenstein delivers this production as a critical appreciation and as a celebration of a singular and wholly American talent. B.P. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-09-06
Highlights from the life and career of one of America’s most famous playwrights.
“Why are you a revolutionary?” Arthur Miller (1915-2005) asked himself in one of his notebooks. “Because the truth is revolutionary and the truth you shall live by.” In the latest installment of the publisher’s Jewish Lives series, Lahr, whose 2014 biography of Tennessee Williams won the National Book Critics Circle Award, shows the ways in which that truth-seeking spirit manifested itself in one of the most storied playwriting careers ever. Miller grew up in Jewish Harlem, and his father, Isidore Miller, was the owner of a financially successful clothing company before the Depression wiped out the family’s savings. His “unhappy” mother, Augusta, believed that “Arty” had a “special destiny,” but his high school grades were so bad that no college would accept him. He eventually attended the University of Michigan, where he would “soak up” Marxism, gain sympathy for the working class, and learn to incorporate politics and family life into landmarks of the American theater, including All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. Lahr takes readers through the highs and lows of his subject’s life: the antisemitism he faced; his break with director Elia Kazan over Kazan’s willingness to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee; and his three marriages, including a disastrous union with Marilyn Monroe. Lahr cites Miller’s autobiography, Timebends, so often that some readers may want to go directly to the original source. He does a good job, however, showing how Miller’s experiences informed plays such as The Golden Years, The Price, The Crucible, and the Pulitzer-winning Salesman. Lahr also excels in his analyses of Miller’s works, including his one novel, Focus, which showed how alienation and mindlessness were “part of the equation that results in anti-Semitism,” and plays such as 1964’s After the Fall, his first after his marriage to Monroe, a flawed work that is nonetheless “extraordinary as a map of Miller’s internal geography.”
An engaging summary of a celebrated and checkered career.
