(Page 5 of 6)
In a biography of Monroe, Maurice Zolotow wrote that Mr. Miller had "to give
up his entire time to attend to her wants." He was once asked if he had
resented having to care for her to the detriment of his work. "Oh, yeah," he
answered.
"After the Fall," his most overtly autobiographical play, brought Mr. Miller
a storm of criticism when it was produced in 1964, shortly after Monroe's
death. The play, which had been written soon after the collapse of their
marriage, implies a search for understanding of his responsibility toward
her, of her inability to cope, and of his failure to help her. He insisted
that he was dealing with large human themes and professed surprise when
critics noted the resemblance between Monroe and Maggie, the drug-addicted,
blond-wigged protagonist in the play, and accused him of capitalizing on
Monroe's fame and defiling her image.
"The play," he said at the time, "is a work of fiction. No one is reported in
this play. The characters are created as they are in any other play in order
to develop a coherent theme, which in this case concerns the nature of human
insight, of self-destructiveness and violence toward others." And although
many of the characters were seen as thinly veiled, he said they resembled
real people "neither more nor less than in any other play I ever wrote."
Almost no one took his explanations at face value, and some of his critics
considered the play a cruel way of getting even, not only with Marilyn Monroe
but also with her teachers from the Actors Studio, Paula and Lee Strasberg,
who came in for Mr. Miller's special contempt.
Similar criticisms were voiced when Mr. Miller's last play, "Finishing the
Picture," was produced at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in the fall of 2004.
The play depicted the making of the movie "The Misfits."
But "After the Fall" did occasion Mr. Miller's reunion with Kazan, the most
insightful director of his work. It was brought about by Whitehead, one of
the architects of the ambitious plan to create an American repertory theater
company as part of the new Lincoln Center complex. In his autobiography, "A
Life," Kazan wrote, "Once brought together, Art and I got along well - even
though I was somewhat tense in his company, because we'd never discussed (and
never did discuss) the reasons for our 'break.' "
"After the Fall" was the inaugural production of the Repertory Theater of
Lincoln Center, although the new Vivian Beaumont Theater was not finished in
time and the company's first season was produced elsewhere. Mr. Miller
contributed a second play, "Incident at Vichy," to the following season, but
it, too, was poorly received. In 1965, Mr. Miller accepted the presidency of
PEN International, the association of poets, editors, essayists, novelists
and other literary figures, and he became increasingly active in defending
the rights of writers. He was fond of recalling an appeal he received in 1966
to send some sort of message to Gen. Yakubu Gowon, who was about to take over
the Nigerian government, to save the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, who was
facing execution. Mr. Miller wrote that when the general saw his name he
asked "with some incredulity whether I was the writer who had been married to
Marilyn Monroe and, assured that that was so, ordered Soyinka released."
"How Marilyn would have enjoyed that one!" he added. Mr. Soyinka went on to
win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.
In Politics
Mr. Miller, who had spoken against the Vietnam War in 1965 at the first
teach-ins on the subject at the University of Michigan, was also active in
local political affairs in Connecticut and was elected to serve as a delegate
to the Democratic National Convention in 1968.
In 1967, he published a book of short stories, "I Don't Need You Any More,"
and continued to write plays. "The Price," a drama about two brothers, one a
successful surgeon, the other a police officer who had given up the chance
for a more promising career to support his father, was a modest commercial
success and received some critical praise. Both success and praise would
become increasingly elusive in the years that followed, even as Mr. Miller's
works began to appear Off Broadway.
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 218.32.150.209