A winner of The Stranger’s Genius Award and talented writer, Matt Briggs, sides with me on the matter of Arthur Miller. He writes:

You are right. I have always felt this way regarding his plays even in high school where they were presented as high art. I have never understood the earnest love felt for this man’s plays because his writing is so ham handed. He congratulates his audience on seeing the “subtext” because the text is the subtext. Look a picture of a duck. What is this a picture of? A duck? Correct. He presents his work as if reality was a solid, clearly defined object with nothing in front of it and nothing behind it. In his allegories he defines the signified declaring 1=1 and there is no magic in that. And we are supposed to thank this man for the clarity rather than the poverty of his imagination.

I could not have said it better.