From Publishers Weekly
Former New York Post drama critic Gottfried (Sondheim) shares an illuminating and profound picture of playwright Miller. Outraged at the shameful critical disrespect heaped in recent years on the author of Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, Gottfried carefully analyzes all Miller's plays to rebut the adverse comments. An indifferent student, son of a father barely literate yet successful as a women's clothing manufacturer, Miller (b. 1915) blossomed in college and produced promising works: Final Curtain, Honors at Dawn and They Too Arise. The Jewish Miller married Catholic Mary Grace Slattery, the daughter of anti-Semitic parents, and persevered despite the failure of his first production, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944). After this rejection, Miller consciously aimed to create a commercial hit, accomplished with All My Sons. Gottfried leads readers through the playwright's meticulous work regimen-his attention to potential titles, dialogue and scene descriptions, pointing out that it took five years, six drafts and 700 pages before Miller was satisfied with his first hit. Material about Marilyn Monroe is incorporated seamlessly throughout the text, and Gottfried refuses to unbalance his overall literary study with sensationalism. He compellingly presents the Miller/Elia Kazan artistic collaborations and doesn't avoid unflattering details (e.g., his subject's tendency toward pomposity and his tight-fisted financial attitude) but also expresses admiration for Miller's willingness to offer informer Lee J. Cobb a starring role in A View from the Bridge. (Miller discussed his plays with Gottfried, but not his life.) Only Inge Morath, Miller's third wife, remains shadowy. Fortunately, personal stories are refreshingly secondary in one of the rare books that makes the playwriting process comprehensible and consistently involving.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Gottfried says that his book about the man many consider America's greatest living playwright has the "advantages and disadvantages of both authorized and unauthorized biograph[ies]." He had a rich store of past interviews with Miller left over from his days with the New York Post , Saturday Review , and Women's Wear Daily , and from Jed Harris (1984), his biography of a notable Miller colleague. But Miller withdrew support for this book, refusing further interviews, when Gottfried's questions became too probing and personal. Miller didn't block access to his private papers, housed in university libraries throughout the U.S., though; he just didn't help sift through them. So, really, this is an unauthorized book, not unlike Gottfried's All His Jazz (on Bob Fosse, 1990) and Sondheim (1993) as well as Harris , that still has nearly everything the armchair theater aficionado would want: exhaustive research, intelligent play analysis, an interesting life story (early success, terrifying mid-life crisis, rediscovery in later life), and just enough gossip (in this case, about Marilyn Monroe) to add spice. And gossip is hardly central to the book's success. Even if there were nothing in it on Monroe, even if you skim the extensive play-plot summaries, or skip them entirely, Gottfried's gift for fashioning facts into a fascinating narrative is such that the book remains compulsively readable. Jack Helbig
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Choice 9/04
"[An] excellent and much-needed biography...Successfully interweav[es] the playwright's personal life with his creative and political lives...Essential."


New York Post
"A detailed and harrowing portrait.... Excellent."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Arthur Miller has been delivering powerful drama to the stage for decades with such masterpieces as Death of a Salesman, the Crucible, and a View from the Bridge. Yet remarkably, no one has until now told the full story of Miller's own extraordinary life -- a rich life, much of it shrouded from public view. To achieve this groundbreaking portrait of the artist and the man, the award-winning drama critic and biographer Martin Gottfried masterfully draws on interviews, on Miller's life-long correspondence, and on the annotated scripts and notebooks that reveal Miller's creative process in stunning detail. From Miller's childhood and adolescence in Depression-era New York to his heroic defiance of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy years to his unlikely pairing with Marilyn Monroe, here is a highly acclaimed book that is "an illuminating and profound picture" (Publishers Weekly).

FROM THE CRITICS

Philadelphia Inquirer - 9/14/03

[A] big, bountiful life of the playwright by a longtime New York drama critic.

Boston Sunday Globe - 8/31/03

[Gottfried's] abilities as a journalist and drama critic serve him well. [He] lands on a single, salient theme and commits himself to exploring that fully.

Hartford Courant - 9/14/03

Gottfried's examination of the playwright's life reads like a well-made three-act play by, well, Arthur Miller, filled with conflicted characters, moral dilemmas and cool passion.

Bookviews.com - 9/1/03

A definitive biography of this American treasure.

The New York Times