Description
America's most famous living playwright (All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, Incident at Vichy, etc.) here does with his life story what nature does with rock strata, folding it back on itself to achieve the effects of many-layered richness and simultaneity that he aims for in his plays. It's a life as remarkable for its commitment as its achievement. Growing up on the edge of Harlem in the '20s and '30s, the son of a successful but semiliterate coat manufacturer, Miller discovered both his vocation and his leftist political convictions during the Depression and the rise of fascism. He achieved a moral victory against McCarthyism in the '50s; and it was under his presidency that PEN went from an ineffectual literary club to a real force for international freedom of expression. While covering these events, Miller traces the genesis of his plays in his life experience, provides vivid portraits of a host of notables in the worlds of theater, cinema and politics, including Elia Kazan, Lee an
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