'I' editors: tony schwartz marty porter contributing editors: laura berman howie brick Sunday magazine inside: books-page 4 gallagher reflects-page 5 Number 10 Page Three PR' December 2, 1973 OFILES Miller's artist By TONY SCHWARTZ "The play's the thing . ." -Hamlet, Act III, Hamlet BY FRIDAY MORNING, a little less than a week after his arrival as the Uni- versity's Adjunct-Theatre-Professor-in-Resi- dence, Arthur Miller is visibly bummed out. He is tired of answering the same ques- tions, saturated with the constant center- stage attention reaped upon him, and frankly, he is bored. Nonetheless, he is off to another class, another obligation, walk- ing briskly across campus in the cold ear- ly morning air. He is flanked on one side by Richard Meyer, the theatre professor who first convinced his old friend to come back to the University, and by Robert Coorigan, an English professor and friend whose class on tragedy Miller has prom- ised to meet. What makes it worse for Mil- ler is that he is missing his favorite writ- ing time, these early morning hours. In return to the his 'Ui encounters HE PAtJSES, considering the alterna- tives. Then: "No I want to write to- morrow morning." "Well, then what about 1:00, for lunch?" I persist, gambling that combining the un- necessary activity, talking, with the neces- sary one, eating, will make him more amenable. "I don't think I'll feel like eating," Miller decides, "but call me then, and we'll see." "I won't ask any academic questions," I add, turning away. "I should hope not," says Miller. THERE ARE a couple of practical rea- sons why Arthur Miller, who has turned down innumerable invitations to teach in the past, has accepted this one. The first is that his old friend Richard Meyer, the University's new Di- rector of Theater Programs, made the offer and convinced Miller that it would be mu- tually valuable. Meyer promised his friend of them did. The thing was that it was too slow a process. You can't sit around wait- ing for something to develop." Instead Miller took two part-time jobs and joined the Daily (I hadn't the nerve to think I could make it as a playwright"). As a re- porter he coveted a host of issues on the politically volatile campus, but in the spring of his sophomore year his first play won a prestigious Hopwood and $250. So went journalism. He quit the Daily and he's been writing plays ever since. TODAY, nearly three decades later, Mil- ler is back, his packed schedule led by a one-credit mini-course he is offering on his own works. Trueblood Auditorium holds about 500 people, but on this Monday, five minutes before Miller's scheduled debut, less than 150 people are scattered through the room. The special audit-ticket I'd picked up, os- tensibly because there wouldn't be enough seats to go around, rests obsolete in my wallet. In the back of the room, Arthur Miller is bantering with Meyer, and few in the class seem to recognize the man who many call America's greatest living dramatist: the 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner (for Death of a Salesman) and recinient of nearly every major drama award in ex- istence. Tall and thin, Miller is dressed almost exactly as he will be each day during his stay. Pipe teetering characteristically from mouth, he is wearing a buttondown shirt and a red rep-tie beneath a grey v-neck cardigan sweater and a light brown sport coat. His baggy brown pants are cuffed and he has on a pair of simple low-heeled brown buckle shoes. He looks just like the Iivy-League professor he will, by week's end, so conclusively prove he is not. THE SMALL size of the class turns out to be a blessing. Miller sits a plastic shell-chair at the front of the stage, sel- dom using a microphone. The only evident sign of Greatness is provided by the long table directly behind him, over which is spread an impressive collection of all his work, published and unpublished, in the 25 years since his graduation. At 58 Miller is balding, but there is a rich and vital look about his face, at once healthy and in- tense, the former probably acquired dur- ing the days he spends outdoors tending his Connecticut farm, the latter a func- tion of his incredibly fecund and hyper- active mind. Later, as I look back over the copious notes I'd taken during Miller's stay, I find that despite the randomness of the ques- tions he was asked, it is still possbile to piece together a composite of his views on writing as an art, the role of fiction in general and theatre in particular, and of the constant artistic struggle to find structure in an increasing chaotic word. These mo- ments, distilled, are Miller at his best. "I hadn't seen or read many plays when I started writing," he begins. "My plays were tied into the social crisis that we lived in. Naturally they were didactic. We had to save the civilization in two weeks. The crises passed though, and we are still here. Now I can reflect a little more. I am more sensitized to my own feeling that I hadn't given enough depth to the human experi- ence. Work itself is an experience. The muscles get stronger, and so do the con- trols. It is repetition, an appreciation of ex- periences. It gets deeper as a result." MILLER'S STYLE is straight, unaffect- ed, and his you've-got-to-hear-it-to-be- lieve-it Brooklyn accent gives him an extra dose of believability. The voice is raspy, coming from a gravelpit deep in his throat, and the characteristic slur seems to creep in each time he builds a point to a climax. "You discover he's just another man," one mini-class student told me. "When you read about him he's 'Arthur Miller: Play- wright'. But his humor and his speech give you a feeling of warmth. It's so earthy, just not what you'd expect from a super- star." This is, of course, no good time for sup- erstars, and Arthur Miller knows that as well as anyone. Perhaps the campus dis- illusionment with heroes, those to whom students once looked for answers and in- spiration, is one reason why Miller isn't tal~king ,to a full-house today. And perhaps critics "Writer's are afflicted people," he ex- plains, puffing away at his pipe. "Their glory is that they make of their wounds something beautiful . . ." It is a natural yet sageful phrasing, and one Miller often uses. He delays the object of the verb, building dramatic tension within a single sentence, a playwright even as he speaks. THAT MILLER often talks like a char- acter out of one of his plays shouldn't come as much of a surprise: "A play will read of it speaks well. I'm acting all the parts all the time. This is a period when lan- guage itself is suspect. There is a sus- pician of anything that is willed, but that will pass when cultural confidence re- turns." On his own enormous success, Mil- ler was modest yet direct, speculating that a certain inherent talent is necessary but adding, "There is nothing spontaneous about writing. I learned to do it and I de- cided to do it and I do it. Writing is a cure for a feeling of total uselessness." The questions wander and repeat through the week, and at the beginning Miller makes an admirable effort to treat even the most idiotic ones seriously. When his answers finally began to show a bit of annoyance or boredom, it is mostly because he is be- ing treated as a professor, asked to didact- ically answer questions about his plays when he'd much rather they spoke for themselves. He tires less of questions about the theater as a medium, and about the direction in which he thinks it is headed. "I think academic theater provides a certain continuity which professional thea- ter lacks. There is theater here all the time, not a hit or flop situation. And there is no reason why it can't relate itself to profes- sional theater. Outside New York there is no haste or rush. I'd like to see young people brought into theater on a realistic basis. "New York theater is expensive because real estate is so high. They're pricing peo- ple out. The only people who come are these rich women in Mamaroneck who drag their husbands to the show. But who needs 'em? At Lincoln Center 1000 students show up for 50 student-rush seats." MILLER TALKED more about the fu- ture of the theater at his only press con- ference, an awful, contrived affair held in the Michigan League. Prior to its start, he is cornered next to a window in the or- nate room, positioned and repositioned for twenty minutes by a mob of seven or eight photographers.. He stands, Bloody Mary in hand, trying hard to look relaxed. In- stead he is consummately uptight, as near- ly any sane person in a like situation would be. Finally he escapes from the An Daily Photo by TERRY McCARTHY other theatre weakens itself, and is less and less relevant to people. "The young believe the only way is to copy the most far-out styles. Fashion is a terrible jail, a load to carry on your back. It is all smashing categories. The young artist should express his vision rather than show how well he can manipulate styles. In theater, it still amounts to the same thing: the good stuff endures and most goes." ARTHUR MILLER does not, of course, write in a social vacuum, and the coun- try's political atmosphere, to which ' he makes numerous wry allusions, is very much on his mind during this visit. Each fresh Watergate revelation, each new high level atrocity makes it more difficult to make sense of the current scene. As Miller responds to the innumerable students who question him about the struggle to find lasting values, the tenor of his comments is often markedly ambivalent. "I allegedly have found meaning in life where the rest of literature is nihilistic," he said to his first class. "I am compelled to seek for some kind of order. I can't settle Doily Photo by TERRY McCARTHY the spare moments he has had this week, he's been working mostly on An American Clock, a play reportedly based loosely on Studs. Terkel's Hard Times, scheduled to premier at the Power Center in the spring. Perhaps Miller is reflecting on the lost hours when Meyer opens up a sheet con- taining a revised appointment schedule. "You've got that radio interview this afternoon." "I didn't say I'd do that" Miller ans- wers curtly. "I'll cancel it. What about this get to- gether with theater students on Sunday?" Meyer asks. "I don't know if I'll do that," Miller says deferring. MEYER SMILES understandingly. His friend is cancelling appointments wherever he can. Enough has become enough, and it isn't as if the change comes as a total surprise. Miller made it clear early on that the academic environment wasn't his favorite, the lightness of his comment belying its seriousness: "I usually don't talk to people- much. In fact I usually don't say anything before 7:00 p.m. But every once in a while I like to talk to people. I think may be I'll have one conversation in a week here that might lead somewhere. I'll be simple about it. I'm not a teacher. My mind doesn't organ- ize itself that way." As I wait for Miller outside his Friday he'd make all the arrangements; Miller, in turn, said he'd come and agreed to an hon- orarium less than he often commands for a single speech. The second reason Miller has accepted is an intellectual one. He's written in the past about getting more good theater off- Broadway and onto places like campuses with good facilities and a non-pressured atmosphere. This is an ideal opportunity. In addition, Miller feels his pointedly non- academic orientation might be a valuable perspective at the University: "I think if I can knock down what I call some of the over-intellectualization, if I can say one line that sticks in someone's head, it will be worth it. I'm not anti-intellectual. But I don't want to lose perspective. Here's where the young are. This is where it's gotta change. They've got to get a vitalistic at- titude toward this whole thing. I don't think it's the only place the young are, and I'm not going to make a habit of coming here, but it's one place to start." IT IS a third motivation, however, which has most persuaded Miller to accept Meyer's invitation, and that one is just plain emotional. "I have a special affec- tion for this school, I suppose, because they let me in - and no other school could make that statement." A kindly dean, in the days before computerized admissions, decided to make a special exception for Miller de- spite his horrendously low math grades. Two years after graduating from high "I think if I can knock down some of the over- intellectualization, if I can say one line that sticks in someone's head here, it will be worth it. The critics have tried to dominate the theater . . . In the facof passion they can't imagine what it is like to feel. They get suspicious, uneasy." 4: :...I}.."J:.... ..:::s S S v:S::.p'{;.v. :SSS*rW.*. . . . . . ..? is what level it "-and ends hopefully: "But we must find a way to live with it. Some- where in the back of my mind there exists another set of values." It is only when a student brings the In- congruity to Miller's attention - the strug- gle for values at a time when they seem nonexistent - that Miller hits home, de- fining the balance he attempts to strike as a person and as an artist: "You don't achieve a victory in life. Rather you live fruitfully in tension. To create, and I don't only mean writing, is to be under tension. Paradise, and that's what I was saying in Creation of the World, is a state of inertia where nothing happens. It is a form of death. The ten- sion is necessary. Once it's over you drop dead in six months." JTIS PRECISELY the glory of this cre- ative struggle which Miller sees as the reason fiction maintains primacy over other forms of writing. "The artist," he explains to a press conference full of reporters, "is more likely to be in tune with a developing dilemma than more objective people like journalists. The artist finds an image of what others subliminally know but is un- formed. He objectifies symbolic meaning so we can get hold of it." Miller seems annoyed by the Tom Wolfe-inspired sug- gestion that the New Journalism is sup- planting fiction. "I think the forms of writing which im- press us most are the ones which are hard- est to do, the ones which require the greatest depth of feeling. That's as hard now as ever. The New Journalism is a legi- timate art form, but not a supplanting one. Later, when we talk together, Miller is more explicit: "Fiction is the hardest form. You create instead of recreate. I read In Cold Blood, and I admire Truman Capote, he's written some great novels, but pick up any novel, any great novel and the feeling there is so much more. I think that jour- nalists don't want to work so hard." THROUGHOUT the week, Miller side- steps questions about perhaps his least favorite New Journalist, N. Mailer. He does, however, have a couple of indirect jibes for the man who treated him so unkindly in his controversial book Marilyn. "The New Journalists are experts at self- ad- vertisement as no novelists ever were" he says to laughs. "Hemingway and Twain were pikers compared to the New Journal- ist's self-advertisements." When I finally meet Miller alone at the week's end, he is more open: "Mailer said it himself, on the Mike Douglas' show I think it was. The research was nominal. You take it from there. Miller crunches down hard on a cherry lifesaver and con- tinues: "He didn't talk to me till after the book was written. He didn't ask me any clicks, moves to the head table, takes a moment to relax and waits for lunch to be served. When the food arrives, Miller im- mediately lays to rest any notion that he is a picky eater; he goes at it with relish and gusto. Arthur Miller is the kind of guy who unashamedly rubs his toast on the plate to soak up the smeary egg-re- mains at breakfast, washes it all down- unpausing-with a full gulp of coffee, and swipes himself clean with an open napkin. After he has finished, Miller sits back, lights up his pipe, parries the ludricrous questions of a self-important reporter at the front of the room, maintains his dis- tance from the rest, and begins talking: "Deterioration of theater implies that we for reveling in the fact that life is chaotic. "What is right and wrong define funda- mental themes. We are all dealing with the same problem - how to make of this hos- tile world a home, that we may live with what we are doing." Miller undoubtedlly struck a responsive chord when he said "I just tell it the way I see it", but in the same breath he acknowledged his uncer- tainty. "It gets harder and harder to make value judgements. I want to know 'What is it in man that keeps positing idealism when life squashes everything on the same level. "WHEN THERE is little relationship be- tn tween man's activities and his life, then he begins to lose his human integrity.