More Weight!

Keeping accounts: another way of talking about writing. Arthur Miller died today at age 89. He wrote arguably the greatest American play when he was in his thirties. He was a working-class Jew from New York who went to the University of Michigan, a place I have some attachment to. He worked hard, did well, took things seriously, wrote brilliantly, and succeeded in just about every way a man could. He was a big guy who didn't shirk the role of a man of letters during a national mudslide into fascist paranoia.

I heard on NPR that Miller built a shack in his yard so he would have a place to work, then wrote Death of a Salesman. I'd love to see the Lee J. Cobb version and then the Dustin Hoffman version, just to see how Willy Loman changed in a generation.

I'll never forget seeing The Crucible in Chicago in 1978 - I think it was Steppenwolf Theater - with my friend Edward Mellish. I told Edward that it struck me as just a bit Buddhist, the line near the end, "More weight! More weight!" when an old man, implicated only by his refusal to be a party to the witch-hunt, chooses to have stones piled on his chest and endure suffering rather than cause others to suffer. Edward thought it was more Christ-like, I guess, but Edward was very Episcopalian.

I came home by way of the credit union and closed my account, which still had $50 in it. A week ago I opened a new account at a different bank - open one, close one. I also sold a car this week but haven't found the replacement yet, so there's a missing piece in my account-keeping. I sat down at my desk to compute the balance, sort through some mail in preparation to do taxes, and separate the kids' documents from mine. I ate rice and beans, drank a Dead Guy Ale, put on a Benny Carter CD, started a fire in the stove, read a little, listened to Cowboy Junkies, worked out, walked the dog, and began to get back on an even keel in body and mind after a hectic and scattered day. Isn't this fascinating? I'm keeping accounts.

Just a disclaimer: I'm not Willy Loman, and my dad is not Willy Loman, although he was quite a salesman; I'm not Biff, and my son is not Biff, although he was quite an athlete. So it isn't personal in that sense. But sometimes when an artist passes, one who has made a difference, it's personal in a different way, especially when that artist stood up for something the way Arthur Miller stood up to McCarthyism.