The American Century: Literature since 1945 695Glengarry Glen Ross turns from robbers planning a robbery to salesmen planning
a sale. Mamet makes the one seem in no way morally superior to the other. The
salesmen are selling tracts of land in Florida; and the Scottish lilt of the title refers to
the fantasy names given to what are worthless pieces of real estate, virtual swamp.
The distinction of the play lies precisely in its revaluation of the desperate faith, the
perverse resourcefulness of the salesmen. To earn a living, they have to combine the
cynicism appropriate to their fraudulent trade with a belief in their skill, the power
and value of their virtuoso sales techniques. Their language tells their story. It is the
story of a group, a club of men for whom “a great sale” is the fiction that gives false
meaning to their lives. So, in its own way, the play is as devastating a critique of the
American myth of success, selling yourself, as Death of a Salesman. Mamet has
continued to explore characters who create a local habitation and a name for
themselves out of fast talk, shared slang, and smart conversation. Speed-the-Plow
(1988) is set in Hollywood, with its flattery and fake intimacy, and it has many of its
creator’s familiar trademarks: language as a substitute for meaning, selling as a mask
for substance, the special status of those deemed to be in the club, the game. Mamet
has also sustained his interest in those moments when different word systems and
worlds collide. His controversial play Oleander (1992) deals with the issue of sexual
harassment in the story of a female student who denounces a university professor.
Whether she has a legitimate grievance or is working with her “group” to achieve a
kind of ethical cleansing, or whether there is an intriguing mix of both at work here,
is never made clear. The audience is left in suspension, to debate. And, in a way, this
is how the typical Mamet play always leaves us. All his characters are not so much
liars as accomplished fantasists. That includes the protagonists in more recent plays
that show Mamet expanding his dramatic vision and vocal register: Boston Marriage
(1999), which deals with the close relationship between two women at the turn of
the twentieth century, Dr. Faustus (2004), a reworking of the Faust legend, and
November (2007), a seriocomic take on the closed world of presidential politics. The
characters in these and other, earlier works all use the wiles of words, sometimes
knowingly and sometimes not, to suspend disbelief in the fantasies they inhabit. As
such, they offer a comment, not just on their own subcultures, but on American
culture generally. One thing it is not difficult to believe, in fact, is that Mamet is
commenting, not just on the fictions of a particular group but on the collective
fictions, the myths of his country.
Other dramatists have used the theater even more openly than Mamet to
interrogate the myths of the country. Especially during the Vietnam War, there was
a flowering of drama that offered a sometimes savage critique of American culture.
Apart from several plays mentioned earlier, such as American Hurrah and Indians,
these included Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? by Terrence McNally (1939–), That
Championship Season (1972) by Jason Miller (1939–2001), and Kennedy’s Children
(1973) by Robert Patrick (1940–). But the dramatist who caught most powerfully
the destructive consequences of the Vietnam conflict in particular was David Rabe
(1940–). Rabe spent two years in the army in Vietnam and that experience feeds
into his three most successful and effective plays, The Basic Training of PavloGGray_c05.indd 695ray_c 05 .indd 695 8 8/1/2011 7:31:39 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 39 PM