A small-time tapdancer is called to perform for Hitler.

(from The New Yorker, April 22, 2002)

The narrator is a man who remembers being told a story in a drug store 50 years ago. Sometimes, this feels like a magazine article, albeit an atypical one. Something about the layers of anecdotes and comments (be it when the events occurred, when they were told, when they were later recalled) gives this an aura of whimsy and truth. As the story-within-the-story gets older, it loses warmth and becomes black and white. “The Performance” basks in the un-pessimistic confusion of those primitive, pre-WWII times, when tapdancing was entertaining and Nazi Germany wasn’t completely understood. A crazy, humane story about crazy, inhumane times.

Arthur Miller, best known as a playwright, died today. To my knowledge, this is the first work of his I’ve ever read.
Edward Albee said this in an AP story: “About a year ago, Arthur Miller paid me a great compliment. He said that my plays were necessary. I will go one step further and say that Arthur’s plays are essential. Arthur and I marched together several times to protest repressive governments. His work teaches us a lot about how to fight evil.”

I believe this rings true of “The Performance.” It’s the story of a silly man who suddenly stares evil in the face, and, at least in hindsight, realizes the evil was a human being. That Nazi Germany, with its sickeningly clean streets and practiced phrenology, was made of people misled by themselves and others. They weren’t monsters. They were people. Evil is people.

Read the story here.