Friday, May 22, 2009

Rebels With a Cause

Literary Greats
New biographies about two arguably great, often critically bashed American writers, novelist John Cheever (1912-1982) and playwright Arthur Miller (1915-2005), tell the respective stories of two complicated men.

Blake Bailey's Cheever : a Life describes a man who detested conformity in prose but struggled with conformity in life. Christopher Bigsby's Arthur Miller : 1915-1962 is an enlightening study on Miller's life and why he wrote so capably about and for the common man.