One of the most obvious features distinguishing plays from novels is that in plays, the playwright is restricted to writing dialogue. The characters' inner thoughts are off-limits. And with the exception of stage directions (which the director may choose to ignore), there's no description.
David Mamet more than makes up for these limitations in his first novel, "The Village." Set in a rural New England village -- probably not unlike the writer's own adopted Vermont home -- the book focuses on a smattering of local folk, jump-cutting from one to another as they struggle with the mundane activities of their daily lives. There's a state trooper, a husband and wife who own a hardware store, a rebellious young woman and an excessively introspective transplant named Henry.
Eager to feel at home in this community, Henry attends auctions, chops wood, skis (and gets lost in the woods). He comes the closest to being a main character in this rambling account of country life, but we never find out much about his background or line of work. Mostly, he seems to be a stand-in for the author.
This painstakingly detailed description of Henry making a cup of tea is an example of the type of information we learn about him: "Hereached a cup out of the sink, and rinsed it, and cleaned it out with his fingers and rinsed it again. He turned to the stove and tapped the spout cover of the kettle, and it stopped whistling. He took a tea bag, dropped it in the cup, and poured the water in. He switched off the stove and took his tea to the table near the window, where he sat, dunking the tea bag up and down in the hot water as he looked out toward the field."
This is a long way from the typical automatic-weapon-style, profanity-strewn patois of Mr. Mamet's plays. If that language, familiar from such plays as "American Buffalo," "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed-the-Plow," is Mr. Mamet's urban voice, then this appears to be his rural voice. But there are some similarities. Where those particular plays are often more talk than action, "The Village" is more thought than action. Furthermore, like the talk in those plays, the thought in this novel isn't especially deep.
Some of these villagers' meandering tales do reach resolutions by the end of the novel. But for the most part, the author doesn't seem to be attempting to tell well-rounded stories as much as he is attempting to paint an overall picture of life in a specific, but unidentified, locale.
When it works, "The Village" summons up comparisons to Dylan Thomas' look at life in a Welsh village, "Under Milk Wood." But while Mr. Mamet's playwriting can have a raw poetic quality, in this novel, he focuses so intently on the ordinary drudgery of life that much of the poetry is missing. Life in Mr. Mamet's "Village" isn't just slow, it's dull.
8, Ms. Rousuck is The Sun's theater critic.
Title: "The Village"
Author: David Mamet
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Length, price: 238 pages, $21.95