Playwright Arthur Miller dies at age 89
Writer won Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman'
ROXBURY, Conn. - Arthur Miller, the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright whose most famous fictional creation, Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, came to symbolize the American Dream gone awry, has died, his assistant said Friday. He was 89.
Miller died Thursday evening, said his assistant, Julia Bolus. She did not give a cause of death.
His plays, with their strong emphasis on family, morality and personal responsibility, spoke to the growing fragmentation of American society.
A lot of my work goes to the center of where we belong if there is any root to life because nowadays the family is broken up, and people dont live in the same place for very long, Miller said in a 1988 interview.
Dislocation, maybe, is part of our uneasiness. It implants the feeling that nothing is really permanent.
Millers career was marked by early success. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman in 1949, when he was just 33 years old.
His marriage to screen star Marilyn Monroe in 1956 further catapulted the playwright to fame, though that was publicity he said he never pursued.
In a 1992 interview with a French newspaper, he called her highly self-destructive and said that during their marriage, all my energy and attention were devoted to trying to help her solve her problems. Unfortunately, I didnt have much success.
