Arthur Miller Criticism: (1930-1967) by Tetsumaro Hayashi (review)

BOOK REVIEWS ARTHUR MILLER CRITICISM: (1930-1967), by Tetsumaro Hayashi. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1969. x, 149 pp. Price $5.00. The need for a complete bibliography of works by and about playwright Arthur Miller has been apparent for several years. Normally, the appearance of this first, full-length bibliography of Arthur Miller criticism would be a welcome addition to Miller scholarship. The nature of certain of its contents, however, raises rather serious questions of sound editorial judgment and bibliographical responsibility. On both counts, Arthur Miller Criticism: (1930-1967) falls embarrassingly short of its potential contribution to scholarship and its claim to bibliographical authority. Professor Hayashi has divided his material into three parts: "I. Primary Material " (works by Miller); "II. Secondary Material" (works about Miller); and "III. Audio-Visual Material" (films, film reviews, and recordings of Miller's works). Acknowledging his indebtedness to previous bibliographers, Professor Hayashi states in the preface that his aim has been "to include all of the known published and unpublished work of Arthur Miller." He further reveals that "some of the sources presented here were discovered personally." It is not, however, until one reaches the table of contents that the magnitude of Professor Hayashi's modest statement becomes apparent. Included in the list of works by Miller are two "undiscovered" and unknown plays: Marry the Girl (1930), and Odd Numbers (1930). Neither of these plays has ever appeared in previous critical studies of Miller or in previous bibliographies. Both are, indeed, unknown to most people-including the Arthur Miller who wrote Death of a Salesman. In crediting Miller with two plays he very definitely did not write, Professor Hayashi reveals his limited knowledge of Miller, current Miller scholarship, and his excessive reliance on secondary sources for his "complete" bibliography. Curiously ,. neither Marry the Girl nor Odd Numbers appears in the chronology of Miller's life and works on p. 11, although his date of birth (1915) is cited correctly . What should have aroused some suspicion somewhere along the road to publication is that Miller was 15 years old in 1930; a fact that by itself would seem to require a direct confirmation of his authorship either from Miller or from his publisher, The Viking Press. Furthermore, Professor Hayashi lists five secondary references for Marry the Girl (p. 104), and two secondary references for Odd Numbers (p. 107). In checking these references, I found no mention of an American author, even though both plays were produced in London theaters and mention Arthur Miller along with George Arthurs as the playwrights. In each instance, the references are to periodicals of 1930 and 1931 from London, England (Graphic and Illustrated London News), but there are no references listed for New York periodicals for either play. To most observers, such circumstances would suggest a somewhat unusual set of event$ for a l5-year-old who grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Failing to notice. (or document) such events, a bibliographer familiar with Miller scholarship might have been alerted to a confusion of identical names by recalling that Miller has been quoted as saying that "until the age of seventeen, I can safely say that I never read a book weightier than Tom Swift~ and The Rover Boys, and only verged on literature with some of Dickens... ," Or, he might have 448 1971 BOOK REVIEWS 449 recalled. ,Miller's widely quoted statement on writing his first play for the Hopwood contest in 1936 while a student at The University of Michigan: "Since I had seen only two plays-and those in my childhood from which I remembered nothing ':""and had read about three others, I could only decide to end the acts by asking a friend how long an act took." Both of these quotations, incidentally, appear in A~thur MUter by Leonard Moss (New York, 1967), pp. 23-24, which cites the original sources of Miller's comments. Moss's work is listed on p. 59 in Professor Hayashi's bibliography. A knowledgeable bibliographer, however, would probably have chosen an even more direct method of verification (short of writing Miller directly), and consulted Who's Who in the TheatreJ ed. John Parker, 8th ed. (London, 1936). There he...