Posted on 08/30/2007 10:56:21 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Arthur Miller, who died in February 2005, [and Inge Morath] had a son born with Down syndrome in 1966. Soon after, they made the painful decision to put the child, Miller’s youngest, in an institution for the mentally retarded before Miller essentially cut him out of his life.
Ms. Andrews describes in detail how Miller rarely, if ever, accompanied his wife on weekly visits to see Daniel, almost never mentioned him to shocked friends and didn’t mention him in his memoir, “Timebends.”
The picture that emerges is of a father in denial and a son who has moved on to live a happy life without him.
...
It’s a subject that most people who knew Miller would rather not discuss. Edward Albee, who spoke movingly at his memorial, declined to comment. And David Richenthal, who produced three Miller revivals, did the same after saying, “I make no judgment.”
Other observers have been less forgiving. In a scathing post last week on the blog for the neoconservative Commentary magazine, James Kirchick suggests that this story “ought to damage permanently Miller’s reputation, if not as a writer, then as a humanitarian.”
What makes the revelation of Daniel so upsetting is how it juxtaposes Miller’s private decision with his public image, as one of the greatest American playwrights and the man who refused to name names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and eloquently and loudly opposed the Vietnam War.
For many of those who came of age in the middle of the last century a saintly glow hovers around Miller, whose plays have often examined questions of guilt and morality through the prism of family. He was a hero of the left and a champion of the downtrodden. “Lincoln in horn rims” is what the critic Kenneth Tynan called him.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Check out Post #39 for my experience with,and impression of,Downs Syndrome adults.What I saw suggested to me that adults (and probably kids) with D/S could be a lot of work...although my experience wasn't "intensive" enough for me to be sure of that.
The two things I do know are....1)D/S adults tend to have *lots* of coexisting medical problems (particularly heart problems) and 2)they tend to be very friendly,kind and loving.
He does fit the template, doesn't he?
“IMO,Miller’s failure to *visit* his son is indicative of a dark and empty heart.”
What about the single women who choose artificial insemination, ensuring that a child will never know his or her father? What about the men who donate sperm knowing that it will be used this way?
Cardboard cut-out characters and a plot too shallow for television.
Yep. Moody, clingy, insecure, pill-popping nymphos are at the top of my list for potential mates.
Despite his many shortcomings, personally and politically, he was one of the finest playwrights and screenwriters America has ever produced. To my mind, there's just no question about that. I put him right up there with Tennessee Williams.
Think about it: the American family - husband, wife and two sons in both plays. Miller's father is a failure in business. O'Neill's father is a failure as a husband and father. Miller's elder son can't make it in business and fails miserably at the boss' office. O'Neill's elder son can't make it on the stage like his Dad and turns to drink.
ALDJIN is the Holy Grail of American theatre, demanding a quartet comprised of the finest actors in the land while Death of a Salesman is performed by high schools and civic theatres. Miller's language was always flat, predictable and pedantic, unlike O'Neill's Yeats-like poetry and pain.
Miller was a hack who made a career out of one play, subsequently turning out cheap, threadbare attacks on the country that gave him fame, fortune and Marilyn Monroe. O'Neill was a genius whose plays lay bare the searing grief and loss experienced by those who base their lives on lies and illusions. In other words, O'Neill speaks to the hearts of people. Miller only speaks to like-minded, leftist intellectuals so that they can all hate America together.
Your daughter sounds like she is on the right track.
A genius IQ is not a prerequisite for having a normal life.
A tactful polite person with Downs syndrome is more of a joy than a mean spirited genius.
Can’t agree more.
Ah-ha!
Now we know the true parentage of Marilyn vos Savant.
I'll just have to take your word for it, I guess.
Long Day's Journey Into Night written 1941-2; first published 1956; first performed in Stockholm, February 2, 1956.
Death Of A Salesman first performed in 1949 -- long before O'Neill's play saw the light of day.
"ALDJIN is the Holy Grail of American theatre, demanding a quartet comprised of the finest actors in the land while Death of a Salesman is performed by high schools and civic theatres."
___________________________________________________________
A Long Day's Journey Into Night also ran for hundreds of performances in Broadway theatres (1956, 1971, 1986, 1988, 2003) with actors like Fredric March and Brian Dennehy in lead. Like DOAS, it also won major awards and critical acclaim. Film versions in 1962 (Ralph Richardson) and 1996 (William Hutt).
The two plays have been equally successful on stage and in film and have both attracted major talent to their respective productions.
You could look this up. I did.
“...evidence that Marilyn may have had sex with Albert Einstein (47 years older).”
Man, talk about Revenge of the Nerds!
See post 53.
Many of us may disagree with Arthur Miller's politics and disapprove of his personal life, but it's beneath us to deny his obvious talent and achievements.
Interesting book.
While it is true that Left wing intellectuals can be a pain in the royal arse,give me a Sartre or even a Chomsky over most of the dumbos I meet every day whose sole contribution to a discussion is”How you like them Raiders?”or”Sally in accounting has a booming ass”.
I remember during my first year of subbing listening to a Leftist teacher”deconstruct”some area of American foreign policy with a couple of wild eyed white kids(there were still a few of them in our district back then).I found the gist of their conversation very jaded and simplistically anti-American but at LEAST they were passionately involved in something besides the Friday night game or the latest E-40 album.
This can easily be confirmed by google searching under "journey into night" community or "journey into night" civic or "journey into night" college -- and then doing the same search for DOAS. Many repertorary and summer stock groups perform both of these plays also.
In March 1949, New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel played host to one of the strangest gatherings in American history. Less than four years after Allied troops had liberated Hitler's concentration camps, 800 prominent literary and artistic figures congregated in the Waldorf to call for peace at any price with Stalin, whose own gulag had just been restocked with victims of his latest purge. Americans, including Lillian Hellman, Aaron Copland, Arthur Miller, and a young Norman Mailer, joined with European and Soviet delegates to repudiate "US warmongering." Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich told the delegates that "a small clique of hatemongers" was preparing a global conflagration; he urged progressive artists to struggle against the new "Fascists'' who were seeking world domination. American panelists echoed the Russian composer's fear of a new conflict. Playwright Clifford Odets denounced the ``enemies of Man'' and claimed the United States had been agitated into ``a state of holy terror'' by fraudulent reports of Soviet aggression; composer Copland declared "the present policies of the American Government will lead inevitably into a third world war."
The Waldorf conference marked another step in the Communist Information Bureau's (Cominform) campaign to shape Western opinion. A series of Soviet-sponsored cultural conferences beginning in September 1948 called for world peace and denounced the policies of the Truman administration. The conference at the Waldorf-Astoria, however, was the first to convene in a Western country and, not coincidentally, was also the first to meet organized and articulate opposition.
The Cominform could hardly have picked a riskier place than New York City to stage a Stalinist peace conference. New York's large ethnic neighborhoods were filled with refugees from Communism, and its campuses and numerous cultural and political journals employed hundreds of politically left-leaning men and women who had fought in the ideological struggles over Stalinism that divided American labor unions, college faculties, and cultural organizations before World War II.
Stealing the Show
A handful of liberal and socialist writers, led by philosophy professor Sydney Hook, saw their chance to steal a little of the publicity expected for the Waldorf peace conference. A fierce ex-Communist himself, Hook was then teaching at New York University and editing a socialist magazine called The New Leader. Ten years earlier he and his mentor John Dewey had founded a controversial group called the Committee for Cultural Freedom, which attacked both Communism and Nazism. He now organized a similar committee to harass the peace conference in the Waldorf-Astoria.
Wow Marilyn could really pick ‘em. Albert Einstein is another man who abandoned a child.
Downs syndrome ping...
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