August 20, 2007

• That was an excellent article! Thanks.
• How the hell can you do that to your own child.
• Fascinating read. I'm quite torn - - espeically with how Connecticut is now going after Daniel's estate. Sounds like he has a great outlook on life, regardless...
• It would be easy to judge Arthur Miller harshly, and some do. That's because he's an asshole. Poor kid. If there's any bright side to this, it's that he seems to have gotten along just fine without him.
• ...And 'saving' the name Eugene for a more 'worthy' kid -- what a complete, intercontinental asshole.
• *pokes head in from next door* I guess you could call this Arthur Miller's Big Boner! Sorry Nick. Great article.
• Cruel.
• That's what they did to downs syndrome people in those days. They used to give electroshocks to people with depression & homosexuality, too. When did Blacks get the vote in the US? 1960s? When did they stop Jim Crow rules? Things have changed a great deal in a short time. Be careful not to judge those from previous eras by our own standards. Miller had no option but to put his son in a home. That he apparently did not visit him subsequently may be more damning, but we will never know what he felt.
• I understand that putting Daniel away was standard procedure, Chy, but not to have anything to do with him? Deny his existence completely? Those may have been the mores of the early or mid 60s, but surely by '76, '86, or '96, there would have been nothing stopping Miller from acknowledging or visiting his own son -- other than his own shame and guilt.
• I have no idea what stopped Miller from acknowledging or visiting his son in the final decades, and neither does anyone else, because he never spoke about it. Shame & guilt are something imagined by people in the moment now, trying to figure out a motivation for such behaviour, but my point above is that we can't know. We can't be in his position. I would think that pain & sympathy would be equal motivators for his behaviour, in fact. The fact that he never acknowledged his son publicly tells us little but implies a lot, but it also doesn't mean he privately did not acknowledge him. In fact the content of the Will rather argues the opposite. I should think there were immeasurably complex emotions & issues at work behind all this. So we can imagine all sorts of awful things going on in Miller's head, if we want, but that is another form of abandonment, in a sense.
• His art not withstanding, what a cunt!
• As I've mentioned before, I worked in one of those places where they kept folks like Down's children. Most of the patients were abandoned by their parents because it was shameful for the family to have produced retarded children, in the mores of the time. Do you know that having someone dying of cancer waa treated about the same way, way back when? If you read old obituaries, and find that someone died of a "lingering illness" you knew they had cancer, but no-one should mention it. I agree that we're all so much open about this stuff,now, but don't judge everyone by your current stasis, or else someone else will judge you in 30 or 40 years time by what then seems tragic stupidity.
• Fascinating read! From the way the autor described Miller's surprise at finding out how well Daniel was doing, I wonder if there was an element of "I can't stand to see him suffer" thinking going on there. Not that people don't conquer that kind of thinking every day to help their loved ones.
• I think it was more of a "Thank god I didn't have to suffer all those years dealing with my son's disabliity" I think Miller was more concerned with his own suffering than any remote thought of the well-being of his son. What a jagoff.
• A weak and selfish act of neglect at first glance but, as path and Hank said, attitudes were different then. A better man may have behaved differently.
• The thing that bothers me about the "Attitudes were different then" argument is that in the fifties, Miller stood up against HUAC. In the seventies, he spoke out against the oppression of Russian dissidents, resulting in a ban on his works in the USSR. Four months after September 11, 2001 he expressed concern that civil liberties could be threatened in the name of security. It's frustrating that a man who obviously wasn't afraid of taking unpopular positions didn't, wouldn't, or couldn't go against the supposed conventional wisdom of his time when it came to his own flesh and blood. Also, by the time Daniel was admitted, institutionalization already had its fair share of detractors; Miller most certainly did have a choice, just as my grandparents did when my uncle, who is handicapped, was born in the late forties. Despite being far less educated/worldly/progressive and immeasurably less well-off, they made a different choice than Miller.
• He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.
• Ol' Arthur was not the only well-known person to 'dump' a disabled family member. At least he didn't mess further with Daniel's brain. Also, what Capt. Renault said.
• It's frustrating that a man who obviously wasn't afraid of taking unpopular positions didn't, wouldn't, or couldn't go against the supposed conventional wisdom of his time when it came to his own flesh and blood. I don't think the one is necessarily inconsistent with the other. Someone who is brave enough to stand up to Joseph McCarthy may not be emotionally equipped to deal with something as devastating as a child born mentally retarded. I'm not saying what he did was right or not selfish, but he may have believed he had no other choice, and been totally unable to deal with the situation any other way. Back then folks didn't have the kind of support they do now, and institutionalizing their loved ones was, for many, the only realistic option.
• More to the point, this seems to me a very private matter for the Miller family. I'd feel pretty uncomfortable casting judgement on what someone I don't know did 40 years ago, under conditions I can't even imagine, after he's dead and can no longer speak for himself. I'm more inclined to think less of Vanity Fair for publishing the article, than of Arthur Miller himself.
• To be fair, the article pays particular attention to Miller's late-in-life acceptance of his son. It's an incredibly sad story, but, despite its initial thrust, I don't think the piece is so much a condemnation of Miller as it is an exploration of his evolving attitude. We want to think of great people as flawless saints, especially someone as courageous and idealistic as Miller. I think a story like this serves an important purpose in reminding us of their humanity. They're human, and that means they struggle against often very inadmirable aspects of their character. Like everyone.
• I should think there were immeasurably complex emotions & issues at work behind all this. Well said, Hank. Very well said. We'd all like to think we'd stand firm in our beliefs, no matter the time, the situation, or the consequences. But doesn't the time and the situation impact your beliefs? I know I'm not the person I wish I could be. Sometimes that voice says, "There, but for the grace of God...." Still, how cruel, for everyone involved.
• ...patients were abandoned by their parents because it was shameful for the family to have produced retarded children, in the mores of the time. How then do we explain W.? Seriously, I just read an autobiography by composer Allen Shawn, brother of actor Wallace Shawn and son of famed New Yorker editor William Shawn -- whose retarded sister was institutionalized by the parents in much the same way as we see here. Doesn't do much to let us into the mindset of the people who made these decisions, but does show that this was the way people reacted more often back then.
• Still, how cruel, for everyone involved. That seems to be the standard reaction, but I don't share it. Daniel appears to have a happy, productive life, with no shortage of people who love and support him. Would he have turned out as well if he was raised by a family that didn't know how?
• I agree with Hank/Chy. None of us are without crushingly tragic, cruel hubris - no matter how great or small. The rub is in how it manifests in the context of one's life. We'll never know if Gandhi would have estranged a Down Syndrome child because, as far as we know, that incident never happened. And, as the outsiders, that is all that we'll ever see - that some of us never realize our greatest dreams and some of us never realize our most terrible failures despite our ravenous potential.
• I agree with me: he was a cunt.
• You're all far more charitable than I am.
• (Aside from Skrik, as usual.)
• Truth is, so many of our artistic idols have moral feet of clay, and ethical knees of terra cotta. And, sometimes, personal values-thighs of pumace. Not to mention propriety hips of - oh, I don't know, maybe DENTAL FLOSS. The point is, we like to think of ourselves as supporting only the finest and most upright sentiments in our aesthetic choices, and yet time and time again those who promulgate the most attractive "flying leaves of art" do so from a forest floor littered with icky fungus and rot-eating moulds. That's why I've recently set up a consulting firm to provide thorough vetting procedures for YOUR favourite musicians, authors and ballerinas. Never by caught out again admiring a Gunter Grass or a Gary Glitter in public - pour scorn on your friends' appreciation of Wagner - protect your children against the insidious threat of drug-addled "Rolling Stones". Quidcorp Ethicart Inc is your one-stop shop for morally correct art and entertainment products. "No pedophiles, no junkies and no Germans, or your money back" - that's our guarantee to YOU.
• quidnunc for urban planner!
• (Aside from Skrik, as usual.) Hmmm. Meditate on this I will.
• Until the 1980's I knew only one Downes child that remained at home, in a big Catholic family. Unless you knew of someone within the institutions, they simply did not exist. References such as 'veggie stick' or 'cucumber head' come to mind from a friend who was a teacher for them. They were regarded as sub-human and treated as such. It was a long struggle to bring any into the communities who did not want them in their back yards and fought release into group homes. Now I see integration all around. Why deplore the past? We've come a wondeful long way in short time.
• I think it'd also be easy to convince yourself, or to be convinced, that an institution could give such a disabled child better care than you could. That they could offer him surroundings more stimulating, care more intense. That may or may not be true, but it'd be easy to believe, especially if the prevailing wisdom of the day also says so.
• It seems to me quite clear that Miller had a choice and opted for the route that suited him best, against Inge Morath's wishes. The article goes out of its way to be balanced, but Miller still comes across as an emotional cripple. He had the more severe disability. Fair play to Daniel for rising above it.
• !