Synopsis
Willy Loman is a middle-class salesman with a loving wife, Linda, and two sons, Biff and Happy. Biff is now in his 30s, a former high school football hero who wants to start a sporting goods store but has been unable to find the money to do so. Willy has also tried to raise Happy to be a man of influence, but has failed at that. Willy's life of pathos and tragedy has, in this play, become an embodiment of the pursuit of the American Dream, a pursuit gone sour. Though it is considered one of his greatest works, this play took Miller only six weeks to write.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1992-11-01 | | Editor: | Arthur Miller, Lee J. Cobb, Mildred Dunnock |
| Size | | Height: | 7.0 in | | Width: | 4.8 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 4.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
"A contemporary classic. . . listen to this album." --The New York Times Death of a Salesman burst upon the scene in 1949, and is as fresh and meaningful today as it was when it opened on Broadway - and won the Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. As Death of a Salesman is Miller's great play, Willy Loman is Lee J. Cobb's great role. He created the part on Broadway, just as Mildred Dunnock created the role of Linda Loman. They both recreate their roles here, with an exceptional cast including Michael Tolan as Biff, Gene Williams as Happy, and in the role of Bernard - Dustin Hoffman. Arthur Miller took an active part in this production, undertaken expressly for this recording - from Miller himself recording the introduction with which the play opens to choosing the director, participating in the casting, and attending the rehearsals. Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915. His first theatrical success occurred in 1947 with All My Sons, which earned him the Drama Critics' Circle Award. In 1949, Death of a Salesman was given the Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics' Circle Award. The Crucible won a Tony Award four years later. His other plays include A View From the Bridge, The Price, After the Fall, Incident at Vichy, The American Clock, Danger: Memory, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, and Broken Glass.
Industry Reviews
"I set out not to 'write a tragedy' in this play, but to show the truth as I saw it."
Introduction - Arthur Miller
"The questions of whether or not 'Death of a Salesman' is a great dramatic structure, or whether or not its writing is splendid or only roughly inadequate, can hold but secondary importance in any discussion of the play. Above them one fact shines: Willy Loman, egotistical, greedy, affectionate, lonely, has risen up as a modern Everyman."
Catholic World - Sighle Kennedy (05/19/1950)
"'Death of a Salesman' is a drama of a man's journey into himself; it is a man's emotional recapitulation of the experiences that have shaped him and his values, a man's confession of the dreams to which he has been committed; and it is also a man's attempt to confront, in what is ultimately a metaphysical sense, the meaning of his life and the nature of his universe."
Reference Books - Lois Gordon
"'Death of a Salesman' has the flow and spontaneity of a suburban epic that may not be intended as poetry but becomes poetry in spite of itself because Mr. Miller has drawn it out of so many intangible sources."
New York Times - Brooks Atkinson
"All Miller knew about his new play was that it would be centered on a travelling salesman who would die at the end and that two of the lines were "Willy?" "It's all right. I came back"--words that to Miller spoke "the whole disaster in a nutshell."
New Yorker - John Lahr (01/25/1999)
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