A man alone

Faber, #9.99

When the playwright David Mamet turns to prose, as he has done in collections like Writing in Restaurants, and the recently published True and False, he writes in a terse, economical style that is as intelligent as it is to the point. His essays are driven by a relentless logic, the writer gnawing at his theme with a step-by-step precision that borders on the obsessive. So succinct is his expression that you frequently have to read a sentence twice to get his meaning.

You can recognise the same rationalistic writer in The Old Religion. Mamet's second novel is presented as a work of fiction, although it is based closely on the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory owner in the Southern States, who was lynched in 1914 after being falsely accused of a murderous rape. If that sounds too similar for comfort to the plot of Oleanna, Mamet's best-known play, in which a college student accuses her male lecturer of sexual harassment, it should be said that the author's theme here is not sex, but race.

His contention is that Frank was a victim not simply of the killer who pinned the blame on him, not simply of the prejudices of the white southern townsfolk who turned on him, but of an institutional anti-Semitism at the very heart of the American legal system. The implication is that the historical conflict between Jew and Gentile is so deeply ingrained that its resolution has yet to come.

Why didn't he put this in a play? Well, it's interesting that the story is told in the one voice denied to the dramatist, that of the interior monologist. Mamet gets under the skin of this slightly indulgent, slightly self-satisfied, generally benign businessman with a stream-of-consciousness narrative presenting mundane thought processes running parallel to a horrific chain of events. As the court decides his fate, Frank is wondering about the pocket watch he nearly bought. As he lies in his prison cell, he speculates on philosophical clues hidden in the letters of a manufacturer's name.

The effect is to present an image of ordinary humanity, a man neither more nor less special than any of us, in contrast to a society so warped with prejudice that even the defence lawyer is against him. And it's also to bolster the impression of a man - and by deduction, a whole culture - alone and alienated from mainstream society. He remains inside his head, not interacting, not objecting, because his mind's gentle logic is the only thing he can fully understand.

It takes a few chapters for The Old Religion to kick in, but it's an insinuating novel, the cool restraint of its indignation slowly sparking a response that is less passionate than political.