Book description
The Genius and the Goddess, based on Jeffrey Meyers' long
friendship with Arthur Miller and extensive archival research from
Washington to Los Angeles, is a portrait of a marriage. The greatest
American playwright of the twentieth century and the most popular
American actress both complemented and wounded one another.
Marilyn Monroe was a doomed personality whose tragic end was
inevitable. Miller experienced creative agony with her. Their
five-year marriage, from 1956 to 1961, coincided with the creative
peak of her career, yet private and public conflict caused both of
them great anguish.
This book explains why they married, what sustained them for five
years and what destroyed them; the effect of the anti-Communist
witch-hunts on their marriage; and the impact of Marilyn on Miller's
life and art. The fascinating cast of characters includes Marilyn's
co-stars: Sir Laurence Olivier, Yves Montand and Clark Gable; her
leading directors: John Huston, Billy Wilder and George Cukor; and her
literary friends: Dame Edith Sitwell, Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov.
Meyers offers an incisive account of the making and meaning of The
Misfits, which destroyed their marriage. But Marilyn remained Miller's
tragic muse and her character, exalted and tormented, lived on, for
the next forty years, in his work.
Jeffrey Meyers is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and
has recently been given an Award in Literature by the American Academy
of Arts and Letters. He has written extensively on literature, film and
art; his books have been published on all six continents, and
twenty-five of them have been translated into twelve languages. His
biography of Samuel Johnson appeared in 2008. He lives in Berkeley,
California.
