"The Death of Salesmen": David Mamet’s Drama, "Glengarry Glen Ross", and Three Iconic Forerunners

This essay places Glengarry Glen Ross in the context of David Mamet’s oeuvre and the whole of American drama, as well as in the context of economic capitalism and even U.S. foreign policy. The author pays special attention here (for the first time in English-language scholarship) to the subject of salesmen or selling as depicted in Mamet’s drama and earlier in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire—each of which also features a salesman among its characters.