Warren Miller (writer)

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Warren Miller

Warren Miller (born August 31, 1921 in Stowe , Pennsylvania , † April 20, 1966 in New York City ) was an American writer .

Life

Miller graduated from the University of Iowa and served in the US Army in Europe during World War II . After the war he worked as a teacher at his old university and took part in the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop . In the late 1950s he worked in New York as a PR agent for the advertising agency Push Pin Studios and finally in the early 1960s as the literary editor of the weekly newspaper The Nation .

Since the mid-1950s Miller published several novels , in addition to some children's books and a report from Cuba after the revolution that sympathized with Castro . The most successful was The Cool World (Cold World) , published in 1959, about the 14-year-old boss of a street gang in Harlem . James Baldwin called the book "one of the best Harlem novels I have ever read". Based on The Cool World , Miller and Robert Rossen wrote a play of the same name, which was performed on Broadway on February 22nd and 23rd, 1960 at the Eugene O'Neill Theater. The directed by Shirley Clarke created and Frederick Wiseman produced film The Cool World (German distribution title: The casual world ) to the Dizzy Gillespie provided the soundtrack, was the 1963 International Film Festival in Venice premiered. The film was entered into the National Film Registry in 1994 .

The novel Return to Peyton Place (1961, directed by José Ferrer ), on which Miller had worked as a well-paid ghostwriter, and The Way We Live Now (1970, directed by Barry Brown ) were also filmed .

Miller was married twice, in his second marriage since 1958 to Jimmy Miller (née Jane Curley ), later author of The Big Win (1969). He died of lung cancer in 1966.

Works

Novels:

  • The Sleep of Reason . Secker & Warburg , London 1956
  • The Way We Live Now . Little, Brown and Co., Boston / Toronto 1958.
  • The Cool World . Little, Brown, Boston 1959.
  • Flush times . Little, Brown, Boston 1962.
  • Looking for the general . McGraw-Hill, New York 1964.
  • The Siege of Harlem . McGraw-Hill, New York 1964.

Novels under the pseudonym "Amanda Vail":

  • Love Me Little . McGraw-Hill, New York 1957.
  • The Bright Young Things . Little, Brown, Boston 1958.

A novel as a ghostwriter:

  • Grace Metalious : Return to Peyton Place . J. Messner, New York 1959.
    • German edition: Return to Peyton Place . Translated by Werner von Grünau . Kindler, Munich 1960

Children's books:

  • King Carlo of Capri. Freely adapted from Riquet with the tuft of hair by Charles Perrault . Illustrated by Edward Sorel . Harcourt, Brace, New York 1958.
  • The Goings On at Little Wishful . Illustrated by Edward Sorel. Little, Brown, Boston 1959.
  • Pablo Paints a Picture . Illustrated by Edward Sorel. Little, Brown, Boston 1959.

Report:

  • 90 Miles from Home: The Face of Cuba Today . Little, Brown, Boston 1961. (The British edition appeared under the title The Lost Plantation .)

literature

  • Glen A. Love: Warren Miller: White novelist in a Black World . In: Negro American Literature Forum , Vol. 9 (1975), No. 3, pp. 11-16.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Dana: A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers' Workshop . University of Iowa Press, 1999. ISBN 0-87745-668-2 . P. 14.
  2. ↑ “I consider it a tribute to Warren Miller, whose name was unfamiliar to me, that I could not be certain, when I had read the book, whether he was white or black. I was certain, however, that I had just read one of the finest novels about Harlem that had ever come my way. " James Baldwin: War Lord of the crocadiles . In: New York Times Book Review (June 21, 1959), p. 4.
  3. ^ Emily Toth: Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious . University Press of Mississippi, 2000. ISBN 1-57806-268-3 . P. 219 f.
personal data
SURNAME Miller, Warren
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vail, Amanda (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Stowe , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH April 20, 1966
Place of death New York City