Studying Death of a Salesman (3)

Arthur Miller

John Lahr with The New Yorker offered the following introduction (2012) to his conversation with Arthur Miller (1999):

For an essay in the magazine on the fiftieth anniversary of the first production of “Death of a Salesman,” I visited Arthur Miller at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, in 1999. With his wife, the photographer Inge Morath, we went to the cabin in the woods that Miller built in order to write the play. (Morath herself had never seen the cabin in all the years they’d been living in Roxbury.) The following is selection of some of the things Miller said about the play during our day together. The newest Broadway production of “Death of a Salesman,” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Linda Emond, and Andrew Garfield, directed by Mike Nichols, with the original stage design of Jo Mielziner, opens at the Barrymore Theatre on Broadway on March 15, and continues through June 2.

Reference: Walking with Arthur Miller.

I love hearing the artist speak to the reasoning, experience and process of creating what was to become, in this case, an American masterpiece.  When Lahr asked if he knew he had written a great play, Miller said he did the moment he finished writing it.