Timebends: A Life

The definitive memoir of Arthur Miller is now in Penguin Classics

A Penguin Classic

Far from a conventional memoir, Arthur Miller’s Timebends offers an intimate look at the life and art of a man who defied boundaries and redefined American theater. As the author of iconic American dramas including Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, and An Enemy of the People, Miller offers an intimate look into his creative process and portraits of the larger-than-life characters who populated his world, including Marilyn Monroe, Elia Kazan, Orson Welles, Clark Gable, Lucky Luciano, Ernie Pyle, John Steinbeck, Sir Laurence Olivier, and John Huston. Beyond the stage, Miller delves into the cultural and political landscapes of twentieth-century America, ranging from the experience of coming of age during the Great Depression to reflections on socialism and the Soviet Union, insights into prejudice and injustice, and amateur psychoanalysis on his own life and upbringing. Timebends transcends the theater, venturing into both Miller’s inner world and his political convictions as a fierce defender of the freedom of expression, from his defiance against 1950s McCarthyism to becoming the first American president of PEN International. Timebends is a portrait of a man as well as an evocative representation of an era that shaped his artistic vision.

Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was born in New York City and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge, A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1963), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972) and The American Clock (1980). He also wrote two novels, Focus (1945) and The Misfits, which was filmed in 1960, and the text for In Russia (1969), Chinese Encounters (1979), and In the Country (1977), three books of photographs by his wife, Inge Morath. His later work included a memoir, Timebends (1987); the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), Broken Glass (1994), and Mr. Peter’s Connections (1999); Echoes Down the Corridor: Collected Essays, 1944-2000; and On Politics and the Art of Acting (2001). He twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and in 1949 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Miller was the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 2001 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters in 2002, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003.