PEN American Center President Salman Rushdie released the following statement this afternoon
about Arthur Miller, who died Thursday at the age of 89:
Arthur Miller was a writer of genius. He made plays with the grandeur and
power of high tragedy, revealing what he called, in the opening stage directions of “Death of a
Salesman,” the “dream rising out of reality.” With the profound resonance of characters such as
“Salesman”‘s Willy Loman, “The Crucible”‘s Abigail Williams or Eddie Carbone in “A View from
the Bridge,” these works have strong claims to immortality.
He was
also a man of true moral stature, a rare quality in these degraded days. Writing meant, for him, an
“effort to locate in the human species a counterforce to the randomness of victimization.” He
added, with his characteristic dry humor: “As history has taught, that counterforce can only be
moral. Unfortunately.”
In 2001, as Emeritus President of International PEN and Honorary
Chair of PEN American Center, he said: “When political people have
finished with repression and violence PEN can indeed be forgotten…. Needless to add, we shall
need extraordinarily long lives to see that noble day.”
Today at American PEN we mourn his passing. But we also continue to be inspired by his
example, and will strive to meet the standards of intellectual and personal integrity he embodied
for so long. I was lucky enough to know him a little, to observe how lightly he wore his greatness,
and to see the mischievous twinkle in his eye.
I comfort myself with the thought that although the man has left us, the work is here to
stay.
“Rushdie’s comments were echoed in London, the headquarters of International PEN. where
Miller is remembered as an invaluable voice for freedom of expression,” according to a press
release from the PEN American Center. “Time and again he used his influence on behalf of writers
who face persecution, not only during his tenure as International PEN president but before and
after, when he joined PEN delegations to countries where writers were under threat and spoke
out countless times against violations of the freedom to write. At times it was Miller’s [personal
stature] alone that saved writers in danger.”
