An Arthur Miller gift that went unmentioned in his Feb. 12 front-page obituary was his oral storytelling. Its core wasn't mimicry, although Mr. Miller was a good mimic. It was the essential action he clothed in dead-on verbs. The playwright used almost no adjectives or adverbs.
Mr. Miller's stories could be small epics, such as his encounters with a Sicilian charmer who turned out to be a notorious killer or Marilyn Monroe's insistence on widening a lake so it could be seen from her favorite chair.
Or his stories could be descriptions of performances such as the sound of taffeta dresses as women bowed to the inspector general or travel anecdotes such as his Kremlin visit to the state censor who was surrounded by marked books. The censor called the books his "weekend reading"; the playwright urged the censor to take the weekend off.
My 10 or 12 encounters with him are memorable for these stories, for his sharp, off-the-cuff analyses of what surrounded us and for his natural, easy decency.
RICHARD STERN
Chicago
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