Echoes Down the Corridor: Collected Essays 1944-2000 - Review

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2001

Arthur Miller. Echoes Down the Corridor: Collected Essays 1944-2000. Steven R. Centola, editor. Methuen. [pounds]20.00. 332 pages. ISBN 0-413-75690-4. Whilst Arthur Miller will be remembered as a playwright, he has also been an essayist. The majority of his essays have been on political topics as seen from a left-wing perspective.

Some however have been on non-political topics such as the joys of gardening or the Brooklyn of his youth. The essays have been arranged in chronological order and begin, therefore, with 'A Boy Grew in Brooklyn'. There are pieces on the Nazi War Trials, the Vichy regime, Richard Nixon, television 'personalities', his unease at the reunification of Germany, Mark Twain and, finally, on subsidised theatre. For anyone interested in the works of Arthur Miller this selection will prove invaluable. As Miller writes in his own preface, 'I have been spouting off over the years away from the stage as well as on it, and this collection is part of the record of the things that interested me eno ugh to write about over the past half century'.