Fortunately for the public, the salesmen depicted in David Mamet’s play are not typical for the real estate business as a whole, although they use many of the sales techniques taught by big real-estate brokerage firms at motivational seminars. Mamet’s salesmen are “hard sell” con artists selling land for far more than it is worth. Typically they obtain prospects from coupons mailed in by people responding to glowing advertisements in newspapers and magazines. The story’s leads are requesting a brochure but do not realize that the brochure will be attached to the end of a high-pressure salesman’s arm. Prospects rarely see the land itself but are shown maps and photographs designed to create the illusion that these subdivisions in far-off Florida, Arizona, Hawaii, or some other sunny place will be turned into a vacation and retirement paradise with golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools, clubhouses, and other amenities. The buyers are buying a dream and an illusion. Most make only a small down payment and continue to pay monthly installments for years, looking forward to the day when they can leave the noisy, dangerous city and move to their patch of paradise. If any actually visit their property, they are likely to be so disillusioned that they will stop making payments, forfeiting everything they have invested, and the land will revert to the developers who will sell it to somebody else. The victims are likely to find that their land is located in the middle of an alligator-infested swamp or on the side of a smoking volcano or in the middle of a desert inhabited only by coyotes and rattlesnakes. They are likely to find that streets and roads shown on the maps are nothing but tracks scraped out by bulldozers and that the amenities depicted in the brochures are nothing but cardboard signs and scraps of faded cloth fluttering on wooden stakes.

While Mamet was struggling to become a successful writer, he worked at a variety of part-time and temporary jobs. In one he did clerical work for a company of “land sharks” such as those he depicts in Glengarry Glen Ross. He liked and admired the salesmen, although he could see they were little better than crooks. What he liked about them was their histrionics and poetry. They had to have vivid imaginations as well as a raw eloquence in order to create the illusions that would make their prospects sign on the line. Salesmen make good stage characters because they are articulate. Mamet’s reputation as a playwright is based on his ability to reproduce the poetry of the American vernacular. He is a successor to writers such as Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and others who have reproduced the beauty in the cadences, humor, and imagery of ordinary American speech.

Glengarry Glen Ross is an example of minimalism, a highly popular school of American literature since the 1960’s. The minimalist writer provides a minimum of information and forces the reader or audience member to make guesses, inferences, and assumptions. This effective technique is challenging and involving. None of the characters in Glengarry Glen Ross is described as to physical appearance. The name of their company is not even mentioned. Their employers are not given last names. The audience must infer that there are other salesmen who do not appear on stage, since it seems unlikely that Mitch and Murray would fire two salesmen if they only had a total of four. Audience members who might be unfamiliar with real estate jargon get no explanation of terms such as “leads,” “sits,” “shot,” and that most holy...