Short Cut to the Apocalypse:

...Against the unconfining Western landscape, he follows his old habit of marking out the shortest cut to the most apocalyptic ideas...

...Dickens made the effort to inform himself and his readers about the physical realities of court procedures, prisons and work...

...Death of a Salesman unfolds Willy Loman's fatigue and disappointment in an aura of loose hints that the fault lies with an economy which does not allow men to work with their hands and do the jobs that satisfy them...

...Any worthwhile writer must at some point protest the misshaping of man's natural inclinations by society, but we believe he is seriously troubled only when he takes some ordinary pains...

...But one cannot recall her movie performances -without seeing how erroneous this image is...

...Miller has awesome patience for the ambivalent relation between father and son and for endless scenes of domestic debilitation, but one feels he would regard it as drudgery to look into the way a salesman actually earns his living or to hover over other grubby details of our social structure and its values...

...There is no doubt that Miller's interest in society is genuine, but almost all of his writing has been in terms of sparking progressive signals with the ringing implication that if he had his way, there would be some electrifying changes made...

...Intellectual perseverance has something to do with the difference in the quality of their criticism and that of Miller, who settles for a brink-of-truth art calculated to give us an elusive thrill: We have come so close and yet escaped any real danger...

...He answered that most people were "conformists" and wanted nothing better...

...Her great acting achievement is the amusing imitation, in broad caricature, of a lady who proffers herself generously...

...The characters in his movie script are a divorcee whose husband was not really there ("I mean you could touch him but he wasn't there...

...Consider the wideranging aspects of character and behavior Chekhov covered in his famous letter of admonition to a talented but shiftless brother...

...Reviewed by Isa Kapp Contributor, "Commentary," "Reporter," "Kenyon Review" On the John Crosby television show several months ago, a builder presumably concerned with the gloomy appearance of American cities and suburbs was asked why he had himself undertaken a massproduced housing project outside Baltimore...

...With The Misfits, Miller has frankly invaded the more private and mysterious territory of bruises to the ego and lack of personal fulfillment...

...Such liberals] believe that salvation comes from saying something, and yet somehow find themselves without anything to say...

...Now these do not seem to be public issues at all, but they are greatly dignified by the assumption that we all in some way share the same fate as misfits in a commercial world we never made...

...two marginal cowboys deserted by their wives, one for a cousin, the other for death...

...When the divorcee upbraids her lover for roping a herd of wild horses that will be sold for dog-food, he explains that in the old days mustangs were used for ploughing or as Christmas presents for children, but somehow, "it just got changed around, see...

...Miss Monroe is rarely spontaneous...

...This kind of token liberalism, which is always with us...

...When cowboys meet, their password is "Anything's better than wages...

...and a 60-year old tomboy too funnylooking to leave Nevada and go back to Virginia...

...Miller does somewhat better with the hilly, sage-scented countryside near Reno, Nevada, but although he is describing something he has actually seen, the phrases fall with the neutral thud of second-hand experience...

...Since Miller has on other occasions written effective dialogue, I don't think too much should be made of all the embarrassing formulations in The Misfits...

...And this created figure is neither innocent nor eager, since the offer is only a joke...

...In any case, the heroine of The Misfits is in great earnest, and it is not funny to read her lines...

...Paul Goodman in his recent book, Growing Up Absurd, is willing to examine the innumerable and precise mistakes, problems and obstacles to which we expose our youth...

...The scenario, here revamped into novel form, seems to have been composed in accordance with his image of Marilyn Monroe as a spontaneous being untouched by the general social corruption and eager "to live...

...was described by Robert Warshow some years ago in a lucid and exacting article in Commentary on The Crucible, Arthur Miller's play about the Salem witch trials: "He is the playwright of an audience that believes the frightening complexities of history and experience are to be met with a few ideas, and yet does not possess these ideas any longer but can only point significantly at the place where they were last seen...

...Asked what improvements he could suggest, he said, with spirit, that we need more "dissent...

...a rodeo rider whose mother remarried and was never the same to him afterward...

...But the accusation has the same kind of effect as do those ennobling quotes from the poets that garnish the chapters of silly novels...