Timebends: A Life was published by Grove Press in 1987. Miller’s autobiography, written at seventy-two, is a substantial book — over 600 pages — that refuses chronological order in favor of the associative, time-bending structure its title promises. Miller moves freely between periods: a childhood memory of his father’s garment business connects to the Depression, which connects to the economic arguments of Death of a Salesman, which connects to a conversation with Elia Kazan about HUAC, which connects to the McCarthy era, which connects to the Salem research that produced The Crucible.
The book is strongest on Miller’s early life: his childhood in Harlem (the family was prosperous) and then Brooklyn (after the crash of 1929 destroyed his father’s business); his time at the University of Michigan, where he began writing plays; and his early career in the Federal Theatre Project and in radio. Miller writes about the Depression with a specificity and anger that illuminate the political commitments underlying his work: he became a left-wing writer not from abstract ideology but from direct observation of economic destruction.
The sections on Marilyn Monroe are inevitably the most scrutinized. Miller writes about their relationship with a combination of tenderness, bewilderment, and self-exculpation that some readers find honest and others find evasive. He presents Monroe as a genuine talent destroyed by the Hollywood system and by her own psychological fragility, and himself as a man who tried and failed to save her. The question of how much Miller’s own behavior contributed to Monroe’s suffering — a question After the Fall also addresses — is present but never fully confronted.
Collecting Timebends
First edition (Grove Press, New York, 1987): Hardcover with dust jacket, photographic illustrations.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$75
- Very good: $15–$30
- Signed: $100–$250