The “Unmanning” Word: Language, Masculinity and Political Correctness in the Work of David Mamet and Philip Roth

The most obvious parallel between the work of the American writers Philip Roth and David Mamet seems to be the amount of controversy that their texts have attracted over the years. Both have been accused of obscenity, for instance, and, more seriously, of misogyny. Roth has been labeled one of the “bad boys of contemporary American letters” Jones and Nance 160 , an author who “projects ... enormous rage and disappointment with womankind” in his work Allen 96 . Mamet, meanwhile, has been termed “the playwright of oaths and testosterone” “David Mamet on Trial at the Court of Feminism” . As these references to “letters,” “oaths,” “boys” and “testosterone” suggest, both writers share an interest in the relationship between language and masculinity. This is what I aim to address in this article. I wish to demonstrate the similarities between Roth and Mamet’s treatment of this relationship, both in their early writing and in their more recent material. I focus on two works by each author, an early piece and a later piece: Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint 1969 and Deception 1990 , and Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago 1974 and Oleanna 1992 .