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Cover Stories: Arthur Miller; Rohinton Mistry

The Literator
Saturday 16 November 2002 01:00 GMT
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There has never been a biography of Arthur Miller, author of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. No doubt such an omission is due mostly to Miller's refusal to discuss his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, which he dealt with in his play After the Fall and his 1987 memoir Timebends. Now Faber has bought Arthur Miller: a life, by the award-winning American critic Martin Gottfried. Gottfried has interviewed the 87-year-old playwright often and has access to both papers and family. The book will examine Miller's life in full, including his years with Monroe and his human-rights advocacy. Having famously refused to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Miller went on to champion writers silenced by repressive regimes around the world.

* No doubt Miller has plenty to say about George W Bush's abuse of the law. Now Booker contender (and winner of the Pacific region's Kiriyama Prize) Rohinton Mistry has cancelled his US tour on account of the conduct of airport staff. A statement from Knopf, US publisher of Family Matters, said that the author has been "extremely unhappy ... As a person of colour, he was stopped repeatedly and rudely at each airport along the way, to the point where the humiliation for both him and his wife has become unbearable". A Canadian, Mistry was born in India. His treatment suggests that, for American security purposes, what Dame Edna would call "tinted persons" are now guilty until proven innocent.

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