15. Big Dreams

The book:  Death of a Salesman
The author:  Arthur Miller
The rating:  4.5 stars

Finally, some concrete evidence that I'm not just a philistine who can't appreciate literary genius.  Unlike Streetcar and Master Harold, I found Salesman to be a fantastic piece of work, not just full of some esoteric literary merit, but also extremely readable, relatable, and poignant.  It's always difficult to review a classic, seeing as anything one might think to say has doubtlessly been said many times before, so I'll try to be brief in describing just what makes Salesman a champion amongst heavyweights.

Salesman is a play to which I'd buy a ticket with no hesitation.  Even with only stage directions as guides, the setting has a remarkable whimsy and surrealness to it; the characters walk through walls in Willy's dream sequences yet pay heed to the rules of the set in the real world, tying his character's mind to the setting itself.  It would be a treat to see, to say the least.  It creates an intriguing atmosphere of deception and misconception, something similarly explored in Streetcar, but I personally found Salesman to capture this mood with far greater success.  And of course, such mood ties in with foreshadowing as well... everything in Salesman interconnects, set to characters to tone to theme to plot to reveal, and these interconnections create what can only be considered a literary masterpiece.

But, as I've been apt to say in reviews of classic pieces, this 'literary merit' isn't everything when it comes to a book or play being satisfying.  Despite their objective merits, some are unbearably dry (I'm still looking at you, A Tale of Two Cities).  That said, Salesman is also an incredibly enjoyable tale.  It's not an edge-of-your-seat ride by any means, but it is gripping nonetheless, casually reversing the reader's perceptions of the lives of the story's protagonists as he or she traverses its two acts and requiem.  As the smoke clears, we begin to see the truth in the lives of the Lomans, and that truth carries a powerful message.  In a society that's always striving for bigger and better, it's essential that we realize that we don't have to be the best, the most powerful, the most well liked.  What we consider success doesn't have to be being number one, and Salesman is the poignant account of one man's realization of this fact and two others' failure to do so.

In today's world of participation trophies, helicopter parents, and assurances we can be president someday, Salesman is uncomfortably relatable.  Success isn't some objective state; we don't need to be chasing the American dream.  All that counts is that we chase our own.  Perhaps it is for this reason that I find Salesman to be such a remarkable book.  It's message is just as relevant today - if not more - than it was in 1949, and a book that remains that powerful can't possibly be dry.