David Mamet argues that theatrical performance operates upon us primarily at an unconscious and preverbal level. Unlike lectures, which have as their primary objective the rational communication of ideas, theatre for Mamet is contained in its ‘inculcation in the audience of the instincts of the hunt’ (p. 18). Mamet insists that a play is not merely the celebration of the hunt, ‘but the hunt itself’ (p. 19). Like the gripping story around the campfire, theatre's essence is contained in its suspension of reason in the face of some primal, overwhelming experience whose epitome is found in the hunt.
It is from this perspective that Arthur Holmberg undertakes his exciting exploration of Mamet's work. Of course, there is nothing surprising about examining Mamet's work through the lens of gender; his plays have often been greeted with hostility by feminist critics and theatre-goers. Especially since Oleanna (1993), criticism of his work has become even more strident. Mamet himself has recently exacerbated – or perhaps deliberately provoked – some of these exchanges as he has lurched to the political right.
Holmberg establishes Mamet's theatre and cinematic work as a continual examination of masculinity and gender, but also reminds us through careful research and reasoning that while stereotypes of masculinity and gender may be explored, they are never uncritically endorsed. Mamet's work is a ceaseless exploration of gendered performance. Mamet is constantly aware of the importance of props and costumes masquerading as masculinity. Petty crooks, shysters and gangsters may people his plays and criminal behaviour is ubiquitous in his films, but these meditations on our dreams of masculinity also reveal something truly ugly and dangerous at their core. It is in the curious space between our desire to extol American macho and the grim reality of where our desire takes us that Mamet's work resides.
Holmberg traces the evolution and transformation of our obsession with images drawn from the Wild West and from gangster films, in contrast to the cult of the gentleman, which prevailed until the late nineteenth century. He examines in detail the decade of the 1950s in which Mamet came of age, scrupulously examining the tropes and accoutrements of masculinity, which dominated that decade. Holmberg is at his best when he connects his insights from our cultural history with Mamet's works themselves, such as his comparison between James Fenimore Cooper's depiction of the American wilderness with Mamet's in the film The Edge.
Whether because of his ubiquitous profanity, the importance of Chicago as place, or his interest in violence and criminal behaviour, Mamet's work has been improperly characterized as primarily urban. Holmberg's analysis works as a corrective to this perspective; it permits us to see the artist as a uniquely American writer whose images are profoundly connected with our cultural obsessions with masculinity. His characters – whether card sharps or crooks – always remain hunters and hunted.
