694 The American Century: Literature since 1945Like Albee and Shepard, Lanford Wilson used the freedom of the theater outside
Broadway to find a style. With him, however, the experimentation tended to be less
radical. In early plays like Balm of Gilead (1965) he experimented with theatrical
versions of cinematic effects, such as freezing the action, deploying slow motion during
death scenes, background music and choric voiceover. In some of this early work, like
The Hot l Baltimore (1973) and The Mound Builders (1975), he also developed his
dramatic skill with overlapping narratives, simultaneous conversations, and fluid time
flow to develop what were to become favorite themes. So, The Hot l Baltimore – set in
a residential hotel the seediness of which is suggested by the title, a neon sign with the
letter “e” burned out – invites the audience to consider the necessity of illusion, the
human need for community (even as rundown a community as the one in the hotel),
and, perhaps above all, America’s betrayal of its past. “Baltimore used to be one of the
most beautiful cities in America,” a character observes. “Every city in America used to
be one of the most beautiful cities in America,” comes the reply. And, in The Mound
Builders, set at an archaeological dig near an ancient Indian site, the human need to
build monuments – mounds, cities, plays – to create the illusion of permanence gives
a quiet pathos and irony to the action. Later plays, like 5th of July (1978) and Angels Fall
(1982), build on Wilson’s ability to explore the complex relations of a group, using a
wry lyricism, drifting conversations, and what may seem like a meandering plot. They
also develop his perception that life is to be endured, occasionally enjoyed, but never
conquered. “The only good thing that comes from these silly emergencies,” concludes
one character after the crisis has passed in Angels Fall, “these rehearsals for the end of
the world, is that it make us get our act together.”
David Mamet first achieved success with The Duck Variations (1972) and Sexual
Perversity in Chicago (1974). They introduced his characteristic style. This is not so
much the vernacular, or the idiom of an actual subculture, as an intensely poetic
instrument. Repetition, intensification, a shared jargon and rhythm – all are used by
the characters to create the feeling of a club – a closed world, with its own games, its
own secret signs and codes. These two early plays also introduced Mamet’s obsessive
interest in how people use language, not just as a communicative tool, but to give the
truth of fiction, the illusion of substance and significance, to their lives. In the 31
short scenes of Sexual Perversity in Chicago, for instance, the separate idioms, the
separate realities or fictions (the two terms seem interchangeable in Mamet’s work),
of a self-proclaimed swinger and a feminist collide. Both in their different ways
afraid of sex, the two manage to break up the healthy sexual relationship of another
couple. They do this, not because what they separately say to the couple to persuade
them is right, but because they manage to make it sound right. Sounding right is
similarly important to the characters in American Buffalo (1975) and Glengarry Glen
Ross (1984), two plays which also take us into the dark heart, the selling of America.
In American Buffalo some minor criminals planning a robbery use a language that
combines the mannerly and the vulgar, the precious and the obscene. Bumbling and
incompetent as they prove to be, their shared jargon, reminiscent of the stylized talk
of the characters in the stories of Damon Runyan (1884–1946), nevertheless gives
them bravura, the confidence to believe in themselves.GGray_c05.indd 694ray_c 05 .indd 694 8 8/1/2011 7:31:39 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 39 PM