Critical and popular debate about Mamet's work often centers on whether we should read his misogynist, unloving characters as reflecting his own misogyny or should recognize a Mametian irony in his memorable depictions. Irony is intimately related to issues of genre and to audience expectations. In turn, Mamet's celebrity colors responses to his work. The essays in this collection approach these controversial topics of gender and genre with verve, ranging from those which cast Mamet as a macho misogynist to those which understand his work as deeply ironic and even feminist. Topics include plays from the early Sexual Perversity in Chicago to the recent Jolly , two films, House of Games and Homicide , and Mamet's first novel, The Village.

Autorentext

THOMAS P. ADLER Purdue University KELLIE BEAN Marshall University KAREN C. BLANSFIELD University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill DIANE M. BORDEN University of the Pacific RICHARD BRUCHER University of Maine LINDA DORFF University of Houston IMTIAZ HABIB Old Dominion University ILKKA JOKI University of Brussels JANET V. HAEDICKE Northeast Louisiana University STEVEN PRICE University of Wales, Bangor ROBERT SKLOOT University of Wisconsin, Madison

Inhalt

Introduction Mamet's Three Children's Plays : Where the Wilder Things Are; T.P.Adler Plowing the Buffalo, Fucking the Fruits: (M)others in American Buffalo and Speed-the-Plow ; J.V.Haedicke Disguise in Love: Gender and Desire in House of Games and Speed-the-Plow ; S.Price Prophecy and Parody in Edmond ; R.Brucher Demotic Male Desire and Female Subjectivity: The Split Space of Mamet's Fictional Women; I.Habib Oleanna , or The Play of Pedagogy; R.Skloot A Few Good Men: Collusion and Violence in Oleanna; K.Bean Women on the Verge, Unite!; K.C.Blansfield 'It's the way that you are with your children': The Matriarchal Figure in the Later Plays of David Mamet; L.Kane Re-encoding 'the Fairy': Knowing Masculinity in The Cryptogram ; L. Dorff Mamet's Novelistic Voice; I.Joki 'A small price to pay': Superman, Meta-family and Hero in David Mamet's Oedipal House of Games ; C.C.Hudgins Man Without a Gun: Mamet, Mystification and Masculinity; D.M.Borden