Florence Eldridge

ELIA KAZAN A Biography. By Richard Schickel. Illustrated. 510 pp. HarperCollins Publishers. $29.95. A BIOGRAPHER'S life is not an easy one. Aside from taxing demands of I.R.S. (insight, research, style), there is the supreme test of tact: knowing what to include, what to exclude. There are not only sins, but also virtues, of omission. A good

Arthur Miller, one of the great American playwrights, whose work exposed the flaws in the fabric of the American dream, died Thursday night at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 89. The cause was congestive heart failure, said Julia Bolus, his assistant. The author of ''Death of a Salesman,'' a landmark of 20th-century drama, Mr. Miller grappled