John Lahr will speak to the Lit on his most recent publication, Arthur Miller: American Witness (https://johnlahr.com/news/). John knew Arthur Miller as well as many of his collaborators, so he looks at Miller very much from the perspective of a theatrical insider. In his talk to the Lit, John will address some of the areas that he had found most fruitful to explore: the extraordinary nature of the Miller family and their family dynamics, the trauma of the Depression and the Miller family’s sociological context, Miller as a student and the autobiographical nature of his plays, the revelatory letter Miller wrote to his parents about his first marriage and his engagement to Marilyn Monroe, as well as his fall from critical grace in the U.S. and his popularity in Europe. This event will be by Zoom.
The book is available from Yale University Press (www.yalebooks.co.uk) with free postage and a 30% discount if you add the code Y2377 at checkout. The discount will be available for U.K. residents until 23 February 2024.
John Lahr has been a contributor to the New Yorker since 1991, where, for twenty-one years, he was its Senior Drama Critic. He is the author of eighteen books including Notes on a Cowardly Lion: the Biography of Bert Lahr, (his father), and Prick Up Your Ears: the Biography of Joe Orton, which was made into a film starring Gary Oldman and Vanessa Redgrave. His Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (2014) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Harold D. Vursell Award for Quality of Prose, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is the first critic to win a Tony Award, which recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre, for co-authoring Elaine Stritch at Liberty.
Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society 