More Recent Books on Miller
(2005--2010)
- Brenda Murphy's edited collection, Arthur Miller: Critical
Insights for Salem Press, 2010, contains an excellent selection
of new and reprinted essays on Miller's work, including: On Arthur
Miller / Brenda Murphy -- Biography of Arthur Miller / Carl Rollyson
and Victoria Price -- The Paris Review perspective / Richard Beck for
The Paris Review -- Best intentions far awry: the family dynamic in
Miller's All my sons and Death of a salesman / Pamela Loos -- "It's all
about the language": Arthur Miller's poetic dialogue / Stephen A.
Marino -- The freedom of others: Arthur Miller's social and political
context / Katherine Egerton -- The critical reception of Arthur
Miller's work / Jane K. Dominik -- Arthur Miller and the art of the
possible / Steven R. Centola -- Arthur Miller: un-American /
Christopher Bigsby -- All my sons and paternal authority / James A.
Robinson -- "There's no place like home": Miller's "poem," Frost's
"play" / George Monteiro -- Asking "queer questions," revealing ugly
truths: Giles Corey's subversive eccentricity in The crucible / J.
Chris Westgate -- Verse, figurative language, and myth in A view from
the bridge / Stephen A. Marino -- Uneasy collaboration: Miller, Kazan,
and After the fall / Brenda Murphy -- All about talk: Arthur Miller's
The price / Gerald Weales -- Both his sons: Arthur Miller's The price
and Jewish assimilation / James A. Robinson -- The "line to measure
from": Arthur Miller's The American clock as a lesson for the ages /
Susan C. W. Abbotson -- Coming to roost again: tragic rhythm in Arthur
Miller's Broken glass / Terry Otten -- Arthur Miller's ironic
resurrection / Jeffrey D. Mason -- The fiction of Arthur Miller /
Laurence Goldstein.
- Ramón Espejo's España y el
teatro de Arthur Miller. Alcalá de Henares: Instituto
Franklin, 2010. Offers analysis of Miller's reception in Spain,
including a comprehensive survey of major Spanish productions of his
plays since 1951 through 2009.
- Review
from the British release of Christopher Bigsby’s long awaited Arthur Miller: The
Definitive Biography Vol. 2 (1962-2005). Here
is another review, this one from Gregory Mosher.
- Joshua E. Polster's Reinterpreting the
Plays of Arthur Miller. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2010. Using
cultural semiotics and new historicism, Polster offers compelling
insights into some of Miller's seminal plays: All My Sons, Death of a
Salesman, The Crucible, and Incident at Vichy. Check the
publisher's website
for more details.
- Jim Fisher's Miller in an Hour.
New York: Smith and Kraus, 2010. Brief guide to the
dramatist designed as a quick reference for directors,
actors and dramaturges, as part of the presses new series: Playwrights
in an Hour. (112 pages). Aimed at those who know very little
about Miller.
- Methuen Drama Student Editions of
most of Miller's plays, approved by the Arthur Miller Estate, edited by
Enoch Brater. Each volume contains the play and in depth notes for that
play newly written, each by a different Miller scholar. So far the
series contains: The
Crucible, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, A View from the Bridge, The
Price, A Memory of Two Mondays, Broken Glass, After the Fall,
and The Last
Yankee.
- In the new (2009) Methuen collected
editions
of Miller’s Plays, the sixth
volume now contains: Broken Glass, Mr
Peters' Connections, Resurrection Blues, and Finishing the Picture.
Just in case you are looking for a print version of Miller's final play.
- Julius Novick’s Beyond the Golden Door:
Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, contains a lengthy chapter “Arthur Miller and
the
Jews,” that centers on Death of a
Salesman, but also references
After the Fall, The Price and
Broken Glass.
- Robert Paul Kolt, Robert Ward's The
Crucible: Creating an American Musical Nationalism. Lanham, Md.:
Scarecrow Press, 2009.
- Maurene J. Hinds, Witchcraft on Trial:
From the Salem Witch Hunts to The Crucible. Berkeley Heights, NJ
: Enslow, 2009. A junior guide to events/issues.
- Jeffrey Meyers, The Genius And The
Goddess. New York: Hutchinson, 2009. A depiction of Miller and
Monroe's marriage.
- Jeffrey Mason, Stone
Tower: The Political Theater of Arthur Miller Ann Arbor: U of
Michigan Press, 2008.
- Eric Sterling Ed. Arthur Miller's Death
of a Salesman (Dialogue). Rodophi,
2008. Essays on this seminal play.
- Christopher Bigsby's Arthur Miller: The
Definitive Biography, became available in the US (from May
2009)-- it came out first in the UK in November 2008 to very positive
feedback. Here are links to two of its early reviews: Times,
Guardian.
- Neil Carson has updated his 1982
book on Miller to bring it up to Finishing
the Picture, Arthur Miller:
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
- Greenhaven Press’ Social
Issues in Literature series has two recent books relating to
Miller:
-- Justice in
Arthur Miller's The Crucible edited by Claudia D Johnson.
Detroit: Greenhaven, 2009
-- Suicide in
Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesman edited by Alicia
Cafferty Lerner and Adrienne Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2008.
Contents of the latter: Background on Arthur Miller. The Life and
Career of Arthur Miller / Stephen A. Marino ; An Overview of Death of a Salesman / L.M. Domina ;
Miller and Others Comment on the impact of Death of a Salesman / Arthur
Miller, Robert Falls, and Brian Dennehy; Interviewed by Paul Solman --
Suicide and Death of a Salesman.
Willy Loman as a Tragic Hero / Robert A. Martin; Willy Loman is Dying
Throughout the Play / Harold Bloom ; The Ambiguity of Biff's Feelings
for Willy / H.C. Phelps; Many Factors Led to Willy's Suicide / Sighle
Kennedy; Willy Loman had the Wrong Dreams / Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.;
Willy Loman is Undone by the American Dream / Thomas E. Porter;
Alienation from His Work Drives Willy Loman to Suicide / Paul Blumberg;
Miller Uses Objects to Convey Failure and Other Themes / Marianne
Boruch; Death of a Salesman
in China / Arthur Miller; A Student
Responds Emotionally to Death of a
Salesman / Meredith Kopald--Contemporary Perspectives on
Suicide. Suicide Rates Rise across the
Globe / The Economist; A
Documentary about Suicide Sparks Debate /
Killian Fox; The Ethics of Physician-assisted Suicide / Renske Heddema;
Involvement Therapy Helps Suicide Survivors Cope / Bob Condor;
Raising Awareness of Elder Suicide / Ezra Ochshorn.
- Susan C. W. Abbotson, A Critical Companion to
Arthur Miller, New York: Facts on File, 2007--your one-stop
encyclopedia on all things Miller! Entries on all of Miller's drama,
fiction, and much of his non-fiction, as well as guides to themes,
people and places with whom/which Miller can be connected.
- Silima Nanda's Faces of Miller Women,
was published in New Delhi, India : Mittal Publications, 2007 (try D.
K. Agencies to get a copy: www.dkagencies.com).
- Enoch Brater Ed. Arthur Miller's Global
Theater. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 2007. Collection of
new essays.
- Harold Bloom has been busy putting
out several collections of
essays he has culled from a variety of sources (most of these essays
have been printed elsewhere, but are handily collected here in these
one-stop sources)—some are earlier editions that have been updated or
expanded. Of interest to Miller scholars might be:
--Arthur
Miller. Philadelphia:
Chelsea House, 2003.
Contents: Introduction / Harold
Bloom -- Biography of Arthur Miller /
Cookie Lommel -- Arthur Miller : An Introduction / Neil Heims -- The
Action and its Significance : Arthur Miller's Struggle with Dramatic
Form / Orm Overland -- Miller and Things / Marianne Boruch -- From Honors at Dawn to Death of a Salesman : Marxism and
the Early Plays of Arthur Miller / Helge Normann Nilsen.
--Arthur
Miller.
New York : Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2007.
Contents: Arthur Miller's The
Crucible and the Salem Witch
Trials: A Historian's View / Edward
S. Morgan -- The Wooster Group, Arthur Miller, and The Crucible / David Savran -- All My Sons and Paternal Authority
/ James A. Robinson -- Unsafe Convictions: Unhappy Confessions in The Crucible / Valerie Lowe -- Death of a Salesman and American
Leadership: Life Imitates Art / John S. Shockley -- Issues of Identity
in Broken
Glass: A Humanist
Response to a Postmodern World / Susan C.W. Abbotson -- Personality
Wins the Day: Death of a Salesman
and Popular Sales Advice Literature / Brenda Murphy -- A Portrait of
Arthur Miller / Jeffrey Meyers -- Death
of a Salesman vs. Columbia
Pictures: the Strange Case of Career of a Salesman / Kevin
Kerrane -- Finishing the Picture: Arthur Miller, 1915-2005 / Laurence
Goldstein -- Miller's Tale: The Playwright Drew a Line between Reaching
Out and Selling Out / Wendy Smith -- Arthur Miller and the Art of the
Possible / Steven R. Centola.
--Arthur
Miller's
Death of a Salesman. New
York : Chelsea House Publishers, 2007
Contents: Memory: Miller / Peter
Szondi -- Rhythm between Fathers and
Sons: Death
of a Salesman /
Leah Hadomi -- Family Values in Death
of a Salesman / Steven R.
Centola -- The Crisis of Authenticity
: Death
of a Salesman and the
Tragic Muse / Stephen Barker -- Arthur Miller: Poet / Christopher
Bigsby -- Death of a Salesman at
Fifty: An Interview with Arthur Miller / Colby H. Kullman -- Miller's
Poetic Use of Demotic English in Death
of a Salesman / Frank
Ardolino -- Death of a Salesman at Fifty: Still
"coming home to roost" / Terry Otten -- Shame, Guilt, Empathy, and the
Search for Identity in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman / Fred Ribkoff
-- Setting the Scene : Death of a
Salesman and After the Fall
/ Austin E. Quigley
--Arthur
Miller's
The Crucible. New York :
Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2008.
Contents: Introduction / Harold
Bloom -- The
Crucible / Edward Murray --
History and Other Spectres in Arthur Miller's The Crucible / E. Miller Budick --
Arthur Miller's The Crucible
and the Salem WTrials: A Historian's View / Edmund S. Morgan --
Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller's The Crucible: A Feminist Reading /
Wendy Schissel -- Conscience and Community in An Enemy of the
People and The Crucible / Thomas P. Adler -- The Crucible in history / Arthur
Miller -- The Crucible to A Memory of Two
Mondays / Terry
Otten -- Interrogating The Crucible: Revisiting the Biographical,
Historical and Political Sources in Arthur Miller's Play / Stuart
Marlow -- Poetry and Politics in / Stephen A. Marino -- 'The
CrucibleThe Crucible' /
Christopher Bigsby.
- Alan M. Wald’s Trinity of Passion: The
Literary Left and the Antifascist Crusade. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2007, contains a chapter “Arthur
Miller's Missing Chapter” that considers Miller as a Marxist and his
relationship to socialism.
- Leslie Goss Erickson’s Re-visioning of the
Heroic Journey in Postmodern Literature : Toni Morrison, Julia Alvarez,
Arthur Miller, and American Beauty. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen,
2006, contains a chapter discussing Death
of a Salesman.
- Ryder Jordan-Finnegan’s Individuation and the
Power of Evil on the Nature of the Human Psyche: Studies in C.G. Jung,
Arthur Miller, and Shakespeare. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen,
2006, contains a discussion of After
the Fall.
- Chris Bigsby’s Remembering and
Imagining the Holocaust : the Chain of Memory. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006, contains a chapter “Arthur Miller:
The Rememberer.”
- Powers, Retha and Kathy Kiernan,
eds. This Is My
Best: Great
Writers Share Their Favorite Work. San Francisco: Chronicle,
2005, contains extracts from Salesman
in
Beijing and Miller’s commentary on why he judges this to be his
favorite writing. He states, “I can’t think of another work of mine
that gave me as much pleasure in the writing as this one did,”
explaining the reason largely being he had not been intentionally
writing it for publication, but just to “keep the days from melting
into one another incoherently” (324). He asserts that “in spirit” he
feels this book contains some of his best work, in that it allows us to
see his enthusiasm (324).
- Couple of recent introductory
works: Amy Dunkleberger's A
Student's Guide to
Arthur Miller. Berkeley
Heights, NJ : Enslow, 2005, and Richard
Andersen's Arthur
Miller. New York: Marshall
Cavendish Benchmark, 2005.