This is the first collection of scholarly essays dedicated to an assessment of this playwright's prodigious body of work. The 13 essays--12 original and one revised and expanded for this volume--present the most timely and provocative thinking on Horovitz's canon (more than 50 plays), and address such subjects as ethnicity; violence; feminism; social commitment; the role of mythology; the influence of Aeschylus, Beckett, Ionesco, O'Neill, and Albee; and Horovitz's contribution to American drama. Also included are an interview with the playwright conducted by the editor specifically for this collection, a comprehensive chronology of his life and productions, and the most current primary and selected secondary bibliography.

The 12 original and two classic essays offer a dialectic on performance and structure, and substantially advance our knowledge of this seminal playwright. The commentaries examine feminism, pernicious nostalgia, ethnicity, the mythological land motif, the discourse of anxiety, gendered language, and Mamet's vision of America, providing insights on the theatricality, originality, and universality of the work. Although the dominant focus is on "Glengarry Glen Ross, " several essays look at the play against the background of Mamet's "Edmund, Reunion," and "American Buffalo, " whereas others find fascinating parallels in Emerson, Baudrillard, Conrad, Miller, and Churchill. The book also includes an interview with Sam Mendes, the director of the highly acclaimed 1994 revival of "Glengarry Glen Ross" in London, conducted specifically for this collectio. A chronology of major productions and the most current and comprehensive bibliography of secondary references from 1983-1995 complete the volume.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This collection of 15 original essays, assembled by renowned Mamet and Pinter scholar Leslie Kane, examines the pervasiveness of crime and criminality in the plays and screenplays of two of the most influential contemporary dramatists. The contributors generally focus on one or more works by a single writer, while a few take a comparative approach. Often the works studied are lesser-known or infrequently discussed works, thereby making this volume a valuable addition to current scholarship. In addition, this volume complements other works on Mamet and Pinter on our backlist, including Kane's earlier edited volumes on Mamet which both received solid sales and accolades from Choice. Assembled by a Garland/Routledge author with a proven sales record and impressive critical reception, this collection should be an easy sell to academic and theater libraries, as well as Pinter and Mamet specialists.

Contents:
1. Introduction Leslie Kane
2. "Negative Creation: Detective Story in Glengarry Glen Ross" Steven Price
3. "By indirections find directions out: Uniflected Cuts, Narrative Structure and Thematic Statement in the Film Version of Glengarry Glen Ross" Christopher C. Hudgins
4. "The Discourse of Anxiety" Anne Dean
5. "How to do things with Salesmen: David Mamet's Speech-Act Play" David Worster
6. "Men Among the Ruins" Robert H. Vorlicky
7. "Levene's Daughter: Postitioning the Female in Glengarry Glen Ross" Dorothy H. Jacobs
8. "You're Exploiting My Space: Ethnicity, Spectatorship and the (Post)colonial Condition in Mukherjee's A Wife's Story and Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross" Deborah H. Geis
9. "The Marxist Child's Play of Mamet's Tough Guys and Churchill's Top Girls" David Kennedy Sauer
10. "Be What You Are: identity and morality in Edmond and Glengarry Glen Ross" Jon Tuttle
11. "David Mamet, Jean Baudrillard and the Performanc of America" Elizabeth Klaver
12. "Visions of a Promised Land: David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross" Tony J. Stafford
13. "Things (Ex)Change: The Value of Money in Glengarry Glen Ross" Linda Dorff
14. "Pernicious Nostalgia in Glengarry Glen Ross" Richard Brucher
15. "A Japanese Glengarry Glen Ross" Robert T. Rolf
16. "A Conversation: Sam Mendes and Leslie Kane"
Bibliography of Glengarry Glen Ross: 1983-1995 David K. Sauer and Janice A. Sauer

Winner of two Obie Awards, a New York Drama Critics Award, and the Pulitzer Prize, David Mamet is widely considered to be one of the most prolific and powerful voices in contemporary American theater. A seminal figure whose reputation as an innovative playwright and filmmaker demands an appraisal of his thought and the evolution of his craft, Mamet’s commitment to the dynamic of ethics and ethnicity heavily informs his work. Weasels and Wisemen is the first major study of Mamet’s work to investigate the moral vision and cultural poetics upon which this playwright’s vision is founded. Tracing the development of Mamet’s canon over a period of twenty years from his early unpublished play Marranos through his most recent work, Leslie Kane examines the subtle link between the moral vision and ethical behavior that distinguishes Mamet’s theater and film.