Life of a "Salesman" - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com March 1A Conversation With Charles Isherwood and Joe Nocera Detail of the original playbill for "Death of a Salesman." Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" has unusual currency in today's economic climate. As part of our conversation about the play as it returns to Broadway, I invited the New York Times columnist Joe Nocera - an avid theater buff, not incidentally -- to talk about how this classic play holds a mirror up to American culture, and in particular the culture of American business. Please join the conversation by putting your ideas and questions into the comments section at right, or tweet them using the hash tag #salesmanqs. CHARLES ISHERWOOD: The stock market may be roaring, but we are still deep in recovery and unemployment is rife. Do you agree that the play has a fresh urgency in this environment? JOE NOCERA: I tend to think that there is never a bad time to revive "Death of A Salesman," not just because it is such a great play but because it has so much to say about who we are as Americans. We strive endlessly; we're fueled by ambition; we often measure ourselves by how much money we have, and so on. Here in the age of income inequality--a time when we haven't yet recovered from the financial crisis, and millions of Americans are searching for work--it surely hits home when Willy Loman is fired, after 36 loyal years to his company, by the wealthy (and altogether supercilious) son of the man who had hired him all those many years ago. Yet as much as that scene speaks to this moment, it also transcends it. In the business world, the 1950s and 1960s was the era of "The Organization Man" (a phrase coined by the great journalist William Whyte). The implicit bargain was that if employees were loyal to their company, the company would be loyal to them. ISHERWOOD: What a quaint idea, from the increasingly distant 20th century. NOCERA: That compact broke down a long time ago--as corporations began to place "shareholder value" over all other values, and firing employees became something executives did whenever the share price dropped. That has been the corporate ethos for at least 30 years. How could Arthur Miller have known that the plight of Willy Loman would eventually be the plight of tens of million of white collar workers who had outlived their usefulness to the companies they had devoted their lives to, and had derived their sense of self from? He was prophetic. ISHERWOOD: At the end of the play Willy's son Happy is still essentially buying into the idea that helped destroy Willy. He says, "It's the only dream you can have -- to come out No. 1 man. Does our cultural obsession with mega-millionaires and dot-com moguls promulgate the same idea even more ferociously today? NOCERA: We've always been culturally obsessed with wealth, and especially with the idea of striking it rich. I lived in Texas in the early 1980s, long before anybody had ever heard of a dot-com, or a hedge fund. Back then, it was the oil boom that fueled the imagination of the young men (they were invariably men) who were starting companies on the fly in the hope of hitting a gusher that would make them rich. When Happy looks at his father, I think, he doesn't so much see a man who was destroyed by his dream as he sees a man who failed at achieving his dream -- and that failure is what destroyed him. He sees his uncle Ben, who went to Alaska as a teenager and was -- as he constantly reminds Willy -- rich by the time he was 21. So Hap thinks: I can do it, even if my father couldn't. Hasn't Hap's desire always been a powerful part of the American psyche? I think it has. (In a rather different context, isn't this what George W. Bush thought about his own father)? ISHERWOOD: Oddly enough the other day it struck me that Bernie Madoff is in some ways a Willy Loman morphed into both a success and a monster. Here was another man who found it impossible to admit that his business -- his life -- was a failure; he had to sustain the illusion of success at all costs. Of course Madoff escaped his predicament by becoming a crook. NOCERA: Your Madoff thought reminds me how much delusion is at the heart of "Death of A Salesman." I have no doubt that Madoff deluded himself while committing his fraud; in the early years of the fraud, especially, he clung to the notion that he would eventually be able to get out of his predicament and make his investors whole without anyone being the wiser. Willy Loman has spent his life being deluded about his place in the world; that is one of the saddest things about the play. He convinces himself that he is "well-liked" and well-known, that the old days were idyllic, that he makes more money than he actually makes, that he can open doors with the sheer force of his personality, that his sons are just one step away from financial success. His wife indulges his delusions and, to an extent, shares them. Hap has his own delusions about his place in the world. And so on. Matthew Cavanaugh for The New York Times Christopher Lloyd played Willy Loman in a 2010 production of "Death of a Salesman" at the Weston Playhouse, in Weston, Vt. ISHERWOOD: Do you think today's leveraged buyout guys or corporate titans would feel any pangs upon seeing the way Willy is treated? I read the other day that after seeing the play back in 1949 the head of Gimbel's department stores sent forth an edict that no one was to be fired for being over-age. NOCERA: What a wonderful anecdote! I so hope it is true. But I can't imagine the play affecting any corporate titan like that today. They have foundations to assuage the guilt. Let's face it: Willy Loman had outlived his usefulness to the company, and if his boss had allowed him to come off the road and work in the office -- as he was hoping at the age of 63 -- it would have been an act of generosity. There was a time -- there really was -- when companies did that. They don't anymore. That is why, to get back to your original question, we can have a soaring stock market and high unemployment. The market rewards companies for being able to do more and more with fewer people. ISHERWOOD: Thanks for your insights, Joe, but of course we both know that "Death of a Salesman" is not a play entirely about business. I'm not sure I know of any good plays that are merely about business. David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" and Caryl Churchill's "Serious Money," for instance, like "Salesman," are about much larger ideas too. NOCERA: As are all great plays! There are plays specifically about business, but even though Willy is a salesman, "Death of a Salesman" is not one of them, it seems to me. It has been a pleasure talking to you, Charles -- digitally speaking. Let's do it again some time. IntroLife of a "Salesman": An Online Discussion Attention will be paid. For the next few weeks I'll be leading an online discussion here about the high hopes and hard life of one of the American theater's most famous characters. Willy Loman, and the play that immortalized him, Arthur Miller's 1949 classic "Death of a Salesman," are returning to Broadway in a new production starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. It's a great chance to dust off old memories and old texts and to ask new questions. Does the play's implicit criticism of the American ideal of success feel compelling today? If you saw it years ago, maybe even in high school, will it still have the power to provoke? I'll explore these questions and others with actors, directors, scholars and others. Please join the conversation by putting your ideas and questions into the comments section below, or tweet them using the hash tag #salesmanqs so that I can include them when I sit down with my guests. I started with an essay in the Feb. 26 issue of Arts & Leisure exploring some of the reasons the play feels timely to me. This week I'll be joined by the Times business columnist Joe Nocera to talk about how it resonates in today's economic climate. We'll also be hearing from traveling salesmen, on whether they continue to feel that they're "out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine," as Charley's eulogy of Willy has it. Later on I'll talk to Mike Nichols, who directs the new production, about the influence of the original Elia Kazan production on the current one, which opens March 15. If you want to ask Mr. Nichols some questions, please pass them along. As is often the case with classic plays or novels we've lived with for most of our lives, "Death of a Salesman" can seem entirely different each time we renew our acquaintance with it. If your first exposure came in high school and you haven't read or seen it since, you may be surprised at stylistic innovations that barely registered at the time. Pick it up and see if the same thing happens for you. The debate the play ignited over whether a common man could properly be the subject of true tragedy has by now waned, with its stature in the canon having firmly answered in the affirmative. But given how often "Salesman" is produced - the last major New York revival, with Brian Dennehy, was in 1999 - discussion remains lively about the actors who take these unforgettable parts. Was Dustin Hoffman - so much smaller than Mr. Dennehy or Lee J. Cobb, who originated the role - an ideal Willy? Please get ready to share memories of the production - or performance - that meant the most or taught you something new. My own recent researches into the play brought fresh revelations. I was struck by Miller's confession that he laughed throughout its composition at Willy's contradictions and was slightly taken aback when audiences greeted the play as a profoundly sad one. When I turned to the play I saw exactly where the humor resided and found myself laughing along with Miller. It is indeed funny how Willy can deride his son Biff as a "lazy bum" in one breath and three lines later emphatically tell his wife that "there's one thing about Biff - he's not lazy." These inconsistencies are, of course, what makes Willy such a consistently human character - and why we are still talking about him more than 50 years later. Readers, we've appreciated your comments. One request: Please don't give us your review of the current production yet. It's in previews and there are many of us who haven't seen it. We also think it's only fair to give the actors and directors a chance to iron out any kinks. Our critic will be there for opening night and after that we'll all talk and welcome your reviews. In the meantime, there are so many more topics to discuss.