ABSTRACT
Mamet's characters are never wholly definable; they are composed of contrary impulses. They may use language to deny the purpose of language, but the necessity for faith, for trust, for simple human contact on which they depend to practise their deceits, is a need they also feel themselves. Once again we have a literal confidence trickster, or so it appears. John claims clairvoyant powers, though, in fact, this is apparently just a device for restoring his fortunes and consolidating what is apparently a homosexual affair. David Mamet likes to see himself as responsive to the pressures that have deformed national purpose no less than private needs. He is concerned with the texture of experience, as he is with locating his characters in a familiar linguistic and social environment. Mamet's world is a denatured culture. It has an urban brittleness, a hysteria barely contained. It is a society in which the language of community survives, but not its reality.
