„His career was not all adulation. He had a dry patch in the 1960s, when he felt he did not speak with the accent of the time, and by the 1980s the all-powerful New York critics (whom he loathed) seemed to be tired of him. Constantly, critics objected to his blatant stage moralising: “like neon signs”, one wrote, “in a diner window.”

Mr Miller was unapologetic. He had a purpose, he confessed, even beyond teaching. Though he seemed to be didactic, he was in fact asking questions: “How can we be useful?” “Why do we live?” He was, he once admitted, “in love with wonder … the wonder of how things and people got to be what they are.” The aim of each of his plays was to discover which commitment or challenge his main character would accept, and which he would walk away from: “that moment when out of a sky full of stars he fixes on one star.”

Aus dem Nachruf auf Arthur Miller aus dem Economist – den ich aus dem Kerl’schen Weihnachtsgeschenk habe: Book of Obituaries, die alle im Economist veröffentlicht wurden.

Die Nachruf-Kolumne erscheint seit 1995, und eine Empfehlung auf dem Rücktitel erklärt ganz gut, warum man diese Kolumnen auch ruhig in Buchform lesen sollte:

„There is no chariot as elegant for a final send-off as The Economist obit. Each one is a literary marvel, a dazzling ride through an era. The subjects are lucky (except for the death part): they cross to the other side in incomparable style.” (Marilyn Johnson, Autorin von The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasure of Obituaries)