Short stories by Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) was born in New York City and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1964), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), The Archbishop’s Ceiling (1977), The American Clock (1980) and Playing for Time (1980). Later plays include The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), Broken Glass (1994), Mr. Peters’ Connections (1998) and Resurrection Blues (2002). Among his other works are Situation Normal (1944), the novel Focus (1945), screenplay The Misfits (1960), and texts for In Russia (1969), In the Country (1977), and Chinese Encounters (1979), three books in collaboration with his wife, photographer Inge Morath. Memoirs include ‘Salesman’ in Beijing (1984), and Timebends, an autobiography (1987). Short fiction includes the collection I Don’t Need You Any More (1967), the novella Homely Girl, a Life (1995) and Presence: Stories (2007). Essay collections published in his lifetime include The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (1978) and Echoes Down the Corridor: Collected Essays 1944–2000, as well as individually published volumes ‘The Crucible’ in History (2000) and On Politics and the Art of Acting (2001). He was awarded the Avery Hopwood Award for Playwriting at University of Michigan in 1936. He twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, received two Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards for his plays, as well as a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was named Jefferson Lecturer for the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2001. Among other honors, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the John F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Listing 4 stories.
Set around the 1940s, a thirteen-year-old boy pursues the purchase of a puppy he saw in a newspaper ad, and receives an unexpected sexual experience from the woman who sells him the dog.
A 5-year-old boy with a unique way of seeing the world feels alienated from his mother and tells her that he does not need her anymore. This viewpoint later causes him to lash out at his family, leading him to reflect on himself and his life.
A theatre actor visits his aging father in a nursing home after speaking out about the Vietnam War.
On the day her husband leaves for a work trip, a middle-aged woman hosts a dinner for a few guests at their house. During the meal, one of the woman's friends introduces her guest as a fortune-teller, which makes the hostess uneasy, a feeling that only increases as the night goes on.