Kyle Harrison
to-read
Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem
- Author
- Arthur Miller
- Published
- 1949
- Pages
- 112
- Recommended
- Once
Death of a Salesman
Why it’s on the list: Willy Loman, a travelling salesman who can no longer do the job and cannot stop telling his sons the story about being well liked. It won the Pulitzer in 1949 and has been the standard American argument about what the promise of success does to the people who believe it and do not get it.
Where I heard about it
- Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans, the 468-title curriculum the Substack writer published in December 2025, filed under Drama in the Ages 13–99+ band at Lexile 1320. With The Glass Menagerie, one of two mid-century American plays in the band — a darker use of a formation reading list than most of the other entries.
Connections
- A Library to Build Great Americans — the list this came from.
- Arthur Miller — the playwright.
- The American Dream — the thing the play is an autopsy of.