Death of a Salesman, 2009

For some reason, I started to think about Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller. I came across that play in my junior year of high school. For whatever reason, it has remained the single piece of American literature that comes to mind - more than Huck Finn, more than To Kill a Mockingbird.

I remember watching Brian Dennehy play Willy Loman in a production in L.A. I'd bought tickets for my Mom as a gift. I was a little disappointed that she fell asleep during one of the Act One monologues, and even began snoring quietly. I'm glad she joined me in any case.

There was a part of me that was always drawn to the story because I see something unlike my life - a "what if" scenario that makes me wonder if life would've been better with a father at home. Willy, obsessed with greatness, and dependent on a self-ideation that becomes increasingly untenable with reality, eventually destroys his family and himself.

I wonder how many men are waking up today, thinking they are well liked. I wonder how many are waking up to the reality that that isn't enough - that they need to be good at their jobs, good at maintaining and building the relationships that give us our best chance at happiness in this life, a skill that maybe they didn't learn from fathers who were at home, who were present, and who were, for any given reason, critically flawed.

I wonder how many learned these lessons from their mother, or other family members, as I did.

I wonder how many men see themselves as Biff, the wistful, bright, failed star of high school whose promise and future was destroyed by a critical revelation that tore his world apart.

I wonder how many more are like Happy, ironically named, the victim not of any one turning point but a thousand negations, subtle, but gnawing, until they become self-absorbed pranksters obsessed with the audience and the good time. Men who never could talk to their fathers, but had to passive-aggressively exact their revenge - one neither cold, nor sweet. They were not destined for maladroitness, but fell into it for lack of a destination or the proper sport shoes.

And I wonder how many will become, or are becoming, Willy Loman. How many men will choose, as one blogger put it crudely, the retirement plan of Smith and Wesson? How many more will drink and stink their days in abject might-have-beens, sinking so far that mediocrity becomes a shining city on the hill?

There are projections that women will outnumber men in the workforce at some point during the recession. And studies show that laid-off men are worse domestic partners than while working.

I don't mention the mother, who plays sad foil to Willy's self-absorption, a plaintive refrain of conscience and character. We are all Keynesians now, partly because we are all pessimists. And the reminder of our better selves, and what we did to that vision, is hateful to us, so hateful that we scorn the unmended stockings we see on our departing dreams.

This post doesn't really have a conclusion, or a point, really. Death of a Salesman is a fascinating read in any time. I just hope it remains literature and does not become prophecy, the epitaph for a generation of not-quite-dead men.

Thoughts?