Liars and Saints

  Arthur Miller wrote "Death of a Salesman" in a kind of dream-state; the play seemed to spill out of him. This was *not* a product of years and years of toil. Charley's famous speech is an analysis of Willy's career. A salesman doesn't have a practical skill--a salesman is really selling himself. In a superficial world, appearance and youth have great weight. There can be a moment when the world decides it does not want you; you become invisible. (This seemed to happen to a neighbor of mine--who could no longer afford the house she grew up in. She was falling behind with her taxes; the town chose to drum her out of her home, and she attempted suicide. It's still strange to me that there was no other "solution" to the problem.) Oddly, Charley's speech seems to be about Arthur Miller himself. After the Marilyn Monroe fiasco, Miller lost his standing in American culture. "The Crucible" and "A View From the Bridge" found some Ame...

  I'm especially fond of the waiter at the village pub; things aren't going the way he wants, in life, and he has forgotten (perhaps willfully) to put on an act. In icy silence, he brings your food. When you offer thanks, he says, "No problem," and his tone conveys a different message. "This--all of this--is, emphatically, A PROBLEM." The young waiter has a colleague--and these two flirt inappropriately during the overlap in their work hours. Maybe they'll have a brighter future. *** A kid at the high school died via suicide; the teachers did not know how to respond, so they banned "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." There is a suicide in that novel...ergo.... Local critics complained. We don't discuss suicide when a suicide occurs? Do we also ban "Hamlet," "Les Miserables," "Anna Karenina," "Spring Awakening," "Mrs. Dalloway," "Oedipus," "Macbeth," "Fun Home,...