duminică, 13 august 2023

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/death-of-salesman-based-on-play-by.html winner of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play and it is included on other prestigious lists - 10 out of 10

 

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/death-of-salesman-based-on-play-by.html winner of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play and it is included on other prestigious lists

10 out of 10

 

 

It is for the third time that I write a note on Death of a Salesman, which is one of the best known plays, and one of the best, which has been adapted frequently, one version is included on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list – by the way, you could try to check how many you have seen

 

The tragedy of Willy Loman, the Salesman from the title that makes clear what the public has to expect, is compelling, his name suggests for some critics (or maybe most) Low Man, the essence of his position, he is man that has been defeated, albeit we could also see him fighting back, trying to recover at times

Death of a Salesman brings to mind another superb play, Glengarry Glen Ross http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/05/glengarry-glen-ross-by-david-mamet.html by David Mamet, also a favorite, notwithstanding the recent (well, it might be six months since then, but Einstein said ‘sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it feels like a minute; sit on a hot stove for a minute and it feels like many hours…That's relativity”) discovery that Mamet appears to be a Trump supporter, absurd as that seems

 

Actually, as I have written that down, I do not believe it, it is tempting to look on the internet and check, but what good would that do, we have so many ‘fake news’ out there that it would take time and besides, we have Intellectuals  http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html by Paul Johnson to consult and see that Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Ernest Hemingway, Jean- Jacques Rousseau have been very difficult, to use an euphemism as humans, finding flaws with Mamet should not be a shock

In Glengarry Glen Ross we have a few salesmen competing with each other, an envoy from ‘Downtown’ aka splendid Alec Baldwin has a now classic message for them, showing off his watch, which costs more than the car of Ed Harris (one of a cast that has Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, the late Alan Arkin, prosecuted Kevin Spacey, a dream team, nec plus ultra), the ABC of sales, which is Always Be Closing

 

We have something like that in Death of a Salesman, when Willy Loman is trying to convince the son of his former employer to keep him on the payroll, fifty dollars, even forty dollars would be enough for him, and let us think how great a salesman he was, he tries to talk about the good old days, when he had such success…

 

Andrei Plesu is the greatest thinker http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/01/eminescu-si-recitatorii-by-andrei-plesu.html we have in our realm (which means he is one of the most remarkable in the world, for we are not in any way less gifted than the Americans…seventy million have voted with Trump in 2020, or Brazil, where they had one idiot, Lula, then another, Bolsanaro, and the list is long, let us stop here) and he insists that when we get old, we tend to talk about things that are irrelevant to others…

It feels like that when Willy Loman tries to keep his job, he lied to his family, bringing home money he took on loan, claiming he was paid, but his wife, Linda Loman, knows the truth and she tells their sons, Biff and Happy, about the ordeal of their father, how he drives for seven hundred miles (was it seven hundred miles) and he has nothing to show for it at his age, he has tried to commit suicide

 

There is a phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation, which is presented in the sublime Stumbling On Happiness http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/stumbling-on-happiness-by-david-gilbert.html by Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert, and it explains how we get used with almost anything, though we think we would be p if only we were to move to California, a Caribbean or Pacific Island (I used to dream that a Greek island will be the paradise for me, but look at Rhodes, Corfu, they have been on fire over the last few days)

In fact, when we make such a move, or buy a car, watch, material things, we find that The Power of Habit http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-power-of-habit-by-charles-duhigg.html is immense - hence, it is recommended that we spend money, if we must, but there are Stoic precepts and then the state of the planet, destroyed by consumerism, on experiences, travel and the like, and not on objects…

 

There are situations, events that we find very hard to adapt to, such as the Death of a Salesman, a Loved One http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-loved-one-by-evelyn-waugh-10-out-of.html loud noises (do not move near an airport, or a loud, perpetually barking dog [as I had near me, together with the absolute moron of an owner] because you do not get used with that) or unemployment, which is the case of Willy Loman

Willy Loman had not had the chance to read positive psychology, The How of Happiness http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html by Sonja Lyubomirsky or else he would have found ‘Happiness Activity No 7: Learning to Forgive –keeping a journal or writing a letter in which you work on letting go of anger and resentment toward one or more individuals who’ve hurt or wronged you…’

 

 

Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world    – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

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