Arthur Miller’s “Before Air-Conditioning”

From The New Yorker's archive: the playwright recounts the blazing summers of his youth.  View in browser | Update your preferences American Summer Before Air-Conditioning The city in summer floated in a daze that moved otherwise sensible people to repeat endlessly the brainless greeting "Hot enough for ya? Ha-ha!" By Arthur Miller As parts of the world broiled last week amid record-breaking heat, millions of New Yorkers could at least keep cool with the help of an air-conditioner. Their predecessors a century ago could not. In 1998, the playwright Arthur Miller recounted in The New Yorker the blazing summers of his youth, in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. In "Before Air-Conditioning," Miller writes about the creative, comical, sometimes desperate efforts of his fellow city dwellers to find relief, from riding for hours in open trolleys to sleeping on fire escapes in their underwear. (The boy who would name one of his most famous works "The Crucible" was gaining firsthand experience in how not to melt.) Some of the methods described by Miller read as quaint today, while other details are timeless. "Given the heat, people smelled," Miller writes, "but some smelled a lot worse than others." More from the Archive Life and Letters Why I Wrote "The Crucible" From 1996: Arthur Miller shares the story behind his play about the Salem witch trials. By Arthur Miller Family Album Our Perfect Summer From 2003: One day, it seemed the right time to have a beach house all our own. By David Sedaris More from The New Yorker Annals of a Warming Planet Living Through India's Next-Level Heat Wave In hospitals, in schools, and on the streets, high temperatures have transformed routines and made daylight dangerous. By Dhruv Khullar On and Off the Avenue How to Relive the Pleasures of a Landline With the help of an old rotary phone and a Bluetooth-hookup doodad, you, too, can feel like Rock Hudson gabbing in the bathtub. By Rachel Syme You're receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up.   Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our privacy policy    The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products and services that are purchased through links in our newsletters as part of our affiliate partnerships with retailers.    Copyright © Condé Nast 2022. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.