Apostrophe S

This short play about a terrible misunderstanding kind of left me feeling cold. I mean, I guess there are one of two ways of reading it: Either you’re on the side of John or on the side of Carol, and depending on which character you immediately identify with, that’s the character you’ll probably end up rooting for by the end.

In the first act, a student visits her professor in his office, and he goes off on a few bizarre tangents and tells some stories about himself and about his philosophy of teaching. In the second act, Carol is back in John’s office and we are told that Carol filed a complaint with the tenure committee, claiming that John had sexually harassed her during the meeting that we witnissed in Act 1. The third act finds Carol back in John’s office, where John is trying to understand why and how Carol was able to not only prevent him from getting tenure, but to get him fired, and maybe even charged criminally.

The play is kind of dry, but it’s an interesting examination of how words can get twisted around, and how they can be used to give one person power over another.

I like David Mamet’s screenplays. He is the author behind such great movies as “The Untouchables”, “Glengarry Glen Ross”, “The Edge”, “Ronin” and “Spartan”. He’s also the creator of TV’s “The Unit”. So the man’s created a lot of stories that I’m a huge fan of. I maybe wouldn’t recommend “Oleanna” to a casual play reader — the dialogue is hopelessly choppy — but I would heartily recommend any of the above films.

Next book, “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller

[This article is part of the 26 Books project that I'm doing this year.]