The New Criterion

Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr.! Tony Kushner! John Guare! Edward Albee! There they were, those representative specimens of the left-liberal glitterati of yesteryear, a bit long in the tooth but present, preening, and accounted for at the Majestic Theater this past Sunday to remember, celebrate, and beatify that “Playwright of Conscience,” Arthur “Attention Must be Paid” Miller. What a love fest. “Arthur was brilliant,” quoth the good reverend, “so funny and on occasion, strangely tender.” Le mot juste, that adverb, as anyone who remembers Death of a Salesman from his high school days will affirm. Bill Clinton sent a letter (speaking of “strangely tender”). So did George McGovern--yes, he is still with us. But according to The New York Times, “the most emotional speech came from Mr. Albee,” who dispensed with the humor and strange tenderness while “lashing out at the neoconservative New Criterion magazine because of what he called a ’vile and sniggering unsigned editorial’ written about Mr. Miller after his death.” Dear, dear. As the author of that billet doux, I hasten to object. “Vile”? Heavens. “Sniggering”? Well, chacun a son gout. I should prefer to describe it as disabused. “What an outpouring of pious liberal sentimentality greeted the death of the playwright and left-wing icon Arthur Miller, aged 89, last month!,” I wrote in our March “Notes & Comments.” Could anyone, even Mr. Edward Albee, dispute that?

The Washington Post teared up about the “shatteringly human frailty in his plays,” The Chicago Tribune mourned “the preeminent social conscience of the world stage,” Harold Pinter (who will get a similar send-off when the time comes) said his pal was “a landmark,” and The Guardian told us that the “international theatre community … had somehow assumed that the creator of an American archetype in Willy Loman … would live and write forever.” Prensa Latina, dateline Havana, fondly recalled Miller’s visit to Cuba in 2000, and extolled “an undisputed man of conscience” who “bashed the intolerance that spread in the U.S. during the Cold War, for fear that socialism overtook the world.” The New York Times really went to town with a front-page valentine that went on to occupy an additional two pages inside the paper.

It’s swell that Mr. Albee and his pals get together and congratulate themselves on their good taste, their celebrity and the good taste and celebrity of their friends. And no one would claim that memorial services are distinguished by their adherence to truth in advertising. But really, there are limits. Before Mr. Albee started tossing around words like “vile” and “sniggering” he ought to have reflected on the vile smugness of a playwright whose career owed much more to his radical-chic political posturing than it did to his virtues as a writer. As for “sniggering”, well, Mr. Albee concluded his remarks with the observation that “Arthur Miller was a writer who mattered. A lot.” Now that’s worth sniggering about.