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The Book of the Week is “Timebends, A Life” by Arthur Miller, published in 1987.
Born in 1915 in New York City, Arthur Miller was an internationally famous playwright best known for Death of A Salesman and The Crucible.
Miller commented that in 1932, ordinary Americans were out of money and hope, and the Republicans were out of ideas. In 1952, the Republicans were extremely furious that the Democrats had had a stranglehold on the American government for twenty years. Miller was a participant in an informal think tank of intellectuals– academics, writers and artists, and as was common for the time– who were also heavy drinkers and smokers. They were at wits’ end trying to counter the overwhelming, vicious anti-Communist propaganda of the political Right.
In 1948, Miller and his friend, an Italian attorney, met the mafioso Lucky Luciano in Sicily. In exchange for having three cartons of American cigarettes taken from them, Miller and his guide got a free road-tour of the island. Curiously, at every gas station, their driver wasn’t charged for fuel, either.
In the early 1950’s, Miller tried psychoanalysis, which was the latest thing among deep thinkers like himself. However, he gave it up, as he feared that digging too deeply into his subconscious might curb his creativity, which would mean the loss of his livelihood.
The [U.S. government’s] House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) maximized its power to terrorize all Americans by convincing them that Communists were conspiring to take over the country. BUT the Communist Party had been legal in the 1930’s and 1940’s– the period when the accused had allegedly been associated with it, or knew those associated with it. In many cases, by the end of the 1940’s, the accused had shed their ties to it, so at the time allegations surfaced in the 1950’s– there was no illegality. Even the accused who were actually guilty, were denied due process.
Besides, in the United States, the Communist Party and its front had had mostly Socialist, not Communist goals. There was, and still remains so much ignorance about the two ideologies. In this blog, do a keyword search for “Communist” and “Socialist” to become informed.
Miller forgave Hollywood-director Elia Kazan for naming names of alleged Communists he’d interacted with when HUAC pressured him into doing so. Miller argued that if Kazan had not caved, his career would have been ruined, so he wouldn’t have made any more emotionally moving movies with socially valuable messages; the same way some politicians who make ethically difficult choices by voting on legislation that will harm their constituents, are doing it to get reelected so that they may continue to do more good for their constituents in the long run.
On the other hand, in recent decades, laws have been changed to make excessively unethical behavior legal. So most of the disgusting behavior of America’s leaders is lawful, regardless of the leaders’ unconscionable greed and hubris. One ray of hope indicating that the United States still has democracy, is that it still has two political parties– one to rein in the other.
Read the book to learn a lot more about Arthur Miller’s life and times, generally a rerun of earlier times.