Echoes down the Corridor: Collected Essays, 1944-2000

For some fifty years now, Arthur Miller has been not only America's premier playwright, but also one of our foremost public intellectuals and cultural critics. Echoes Down the Corridor gathers together a dazzling array of more than forty previously uncollected essays and works of reportage. Here is Arthur Miller, the brilliant social and political commentator-but here, too, Miller the private man behind the internationally renowned public figure. Witty and wise, rich in artistry and insight, Echoes Down the Corridor reaffirms Arthur Miller's standing as one of the greatest writers of our time.

For some fifty years now, Arthur Miller has been not only America's premier playwright, but also one of our foremost public intellectuals and cultural critics. Echoes Down the Corridor gathers together a dazzling array of more than forty previously uncollected essays and works of reportage, from "Belief in America" (1944), which recounts Miller's experiences during the Second World War , to the "The Crucible in History", his 1999 Massey lecture at Harvard, published here for the first time.

Spanning the second half of the twentieth century, Echoes Down the Corridor takes us on a whirlwind tour of modern history, as Miller captures the frenzied spirit of our schizophrenic age: the Holocaust and the Nazi war crime trials; the depredations of McCarthyism and "The Night Ed Murrow Struck Back"; Vietnam and a firsthand report on the 1968 "Battle of Chicago"; Watergate and the failed Nixon presidency.

Here is Arthur Miller, the brilliant social and political commentator -- but here, too, Miller the literary critic (on Mark Twain, Ibsen and Tennessee Williams); the Swiftian satirist ("Let's Privatize Congress") ; the world traveler (with his wife Inge Morath at the Opera House in Tashkent, with Harold Pinter in Turkey, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and "Lucky" Luciano in Sicily).

Giving a rare glimpse of the private man behind the internationally renowned public figure, Miller's personal essays paint a fascinating portrait of the artist through poignant reminiscence and evocative memoirs -- of a Brooklyn boyhood during the Depression, of his formative years as a young playwright, of an incredible lifetime in and out of the theatre.

Witty and wise, rich in artistry and insight, Echoes Down the Corridor reaffirms Arthur Miller's standing as one of the greatest writers of our time.

Publishers Weekly

The distinguished playwright's personal dignity and decency resonate throughout this low-key but affecting collection. Best known as the author of such modern classics as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, Miller has always been intensely engaged in the political and social issues of his day, not just in America but around the world. The 50 essays collected here range from atmospheric reminiscences of his childhood in Brooklyn and studies at the University of Michigan, to accounts of visits to China, the Soviet Union and Turkey as an advocate for victims of governmental persecution. Deeply influenced by the radical culture of the 1930s and by his youth during the depression, Miller has always been firmly on the political left; there are several references to his brush with McCarthyism in the 1950s, and "The Battle of Chicago" recounts his experiences as an anti-Vietnam War delegate at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Yet he has never succumbed to utopian notions of human and political perfectibility. The existence of evil is a given, and the collection is haunted by the Holocaust, particularly the question of how much guilt the Germans as a nation must bear and how much can be attributed to passivity in the face of power and to the indifference to others' sufferings of which we all are capable. Dismay at many manifestations of modern capitalist culture jostle a bedrock commitment to free speech in this autumnal work (more than half the pieces appeared when Miller was over 50). Editor Centola does not consistently provide dates for the essays or identify the publications in which they appeared. Nonetheless, this is a welcome companion volume to Miller's Theater Essays, illuminating the fundamental beliefs that underpin his activism as well as his art.

Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915 and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge and Aa Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1964), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), and The American Clock: (1980). He has also written two novels, Focus (1945) and The Misfits, which was filmed in 1960, and the text for In Russia (1969), Chinese Encounters (1979), and In the Country (1977), three books of photographs by his wife, Inge Morath. His most recent works include a memoir, Timebends (1987), and the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993) and Broken Glass (1994), which won the Olivier Award for Best Play of the London Season, and Mr. Peters' Connections (1999). He has twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and in 1949 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Steven R. Centola, who collaborated with the author to edit this collection, is Professor of English at Millersville University and is the co-editor of Arthur Miller's Theater Essays.