In Honor of Arthur Miller '38
By John Woodford

"I've always been interested in Arthur Miller, even before coming to Michigan," Prof. Enoch Brater said in his Angell Hall office festooned with playbills, posters and other paraphernalia of the theater. "He's considered, along with Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, one of America's greatest playwrights, and it's remarkable that he is still a figure in the present, still writing."

This fall, Brater, an expert on modern drama, is teaching a course, The Stages of Arthur Miller, devoted to the work of the alumnus of the Class of 1938. The course is one of several U-M activities honoring Miller, whose Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway in 1949. "Everything about Arthur Miller can fascinate students," Brater said. "Take, for example, the question, why did he come here? The son of a coat manufacturer, he was born in 1915 in New York City. When it was time to choose a college, he found that Michigan would embrace someone from his background. He grew up when many schools, especially elite private institutions, had quotas on Jews, Italians and other recent immigrants. Michigan has had a long tradition of affording access to people who have found it difficult to attain the kind of education they wanted."

Brater believes this to be the first course ever devoted to a U-M graduate. "Meanwhile," he noted, "efforts are under way to establish an Arthur Miller Theater here. President Bollinger and Vice Provost for the Arts Paul Boylan are leading a committee devoted to that project, and I'm pleased to be a member of it."

Miller attended Michigan with financial assistance from the National Youth Administration, a federal program that paid him $15 a month to tend mice in a cancer research laboratory. He also washed dishes for his meals and worked as night editor for the Michigan Daily. He has said that he would have had to leave the University had it not been for the assistance of the federal program. Because of that experience, in 1985 the two-time winner of U-M's Avery Hopwood Award established the Arthur Miller Award to aid aspiring writers with their U-M studies. The award includes a $1,000 tuition credit.

As famous as Miller is in this country, where The Crucible is probably the first play young people read and many perform, his renown abroad has been even more consistent throughout his career. Students are surprised to discover the strength of Miller's international reputation, Brater said. "In a typical pattern with many great American artists, he has even greater respect abroad, where he is celebrated as a writer who critically champions the American experiment the idea that people in a democracy can build a better society. Students, too, respond to this idealism in Miller; a lot of them come from backgrounds that, well, let's just say they can benefit from the mind-opening experience that a Miller play delivers."

"Every French student must read Death of a Salesman to do well on the qualifying exam for college," Brater said. "In China, Salesman is a mainstay of the theater; they see it as a great family play. In fact, Arthur Miller is the most produced playwright all over the world, Shakespeare notwithstanding. I've found that a Miller play makes my students think about essential questions in an uncluttered way whether they are liberals or conservatives. One of the best experiences a teacher can have is to have a student come up and say, 'You know, I never thought of these issues before.' And that's not a rare experience when you assign a work by Arthur Miller."

In early October, the Michigan Quarterly Review published a special issue, edited by MQR editor Prof. Laurence Goldstein, devoted to Miller. (The issue features interviews with Miller; photographs by Miller's wife, the photographer Inge Morath; a playwrights' forum; and essays by John Barth and Brenda Murphy. Copies may be ordered at $7 from the MQR, 3032 Rackham Building, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1070, or by phoning (734) 764-9265.)

Last April, President Lee Bollinger and his wife, the artist Jean Magnano Bollinger, led a contingent of U-M supporters to New York to attend the premiere of Arthur MIller's play Mr. Peter's Connection. In the accompanying photo, the composer William Bolcom, professor of music, and his wife, the mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, flank, from left to right, the Bollingers, Arthur Miller and Miller's wife, the photographer Inge Morath. Bolcom composed the score for an opera based on Miller's A View From the Bridge, with libretto by Miller and Arnold Weinstein. The work will premiere at Chicago's Lyric Opera company next October.