The death of Arthur Miller made me think about a lot of things, like his noble use of the theater to reflect social outrage and the awkward status of artists who outlive their prime. But mostly it made me think about how much cooler it used to be to be a writer.
Exhibit A and the tagline to every story about Miller's death is the fact that he was briefly married to Marilyn Monroe. I heard a few literati on my local NPR station lamenting this fact because it might overshadow the importance of Miller's work. I see their point, but it seems to me that this fact actually elevates our appreciation of what it meant to be a writer in Arthur Miller's heyday.
Can you imagine a playwright today being married to the hottest Hollywood starlet? Let me answer that for you: No. I can virtually guarantee you that you won't pickup tomorrow's newspaper to read that Patrick Marber and Cameron Diaz have eloped in Vegas. You also won't tune in on Oscar night and see Salman Rushdie escorting Halle Berry down the red carpet. And this writer/starlet thing wasn't a phenomena isolated to Arthur Miller. In All About Eve, which I regard as accurate as a historical document, the playwright is also pursued by the hottest ingenue of the day.
The glory days of the writer were also recalled indirectly in the aftermath of Johnny Carson's death. As was recounted in several remembrances, The Tonight Show used to run 90 minutes and generally featured the interview of an author at the end. Watching footage of Carson conversing with Gore Vidal or Norman Mailer, I couldn't help but feel that popular culture has regressed.
Now, cynics might charge that I only feel this way because, as a writer, I want to be pursued by beautiful women and spout my ideas on national television. But that's only half the story.
The full truth is that in an era of George W. Bush and reality television, ideas are becoming passe, and those who write their ideas down even more marginalized. It's a crude barometer of the social climate, but if you tune in to the tail end of tonight's late night talk show, you're probably going to see the latest jackass to get kicked off Survivor. Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather see a talented writer with something interesting to say. And if they've got some pretty young thing on their arm, I figure that's par for the course.
1 comment:
I agree that it used to be way cooler to be a writer. People don't read literature as much as they used to, and percentage of household spending assigned to purchasing books and reading material is at an all-time low as a percent of income. However, the public is not only to blame for the waning relevance of literature - a big part of the problem is that we aren't producing enough decent writers anymore. Too many of the authors that are recognized as "literary authors" write as if they are actively trying to drive readers away. Most of the acclaimed modern American "literary fiction" that I've read lately has been pretentious, overwritten and unreadable - it's like the author tries to intimidate the reader by being as obtuse and impenetrable as possible, without ever telling a real story or getting at real feelings. (A couple years ago I tried to read "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace, and the FOOTNOTES went on for EIGHT PAGES at a time!!) I'd rather read David Sedaris or Nick Hornby any day.
Post a Comment