Power Browser

By R.Z. Sheppard

SOME FREAKS

by David Mamet

Viking; 180 pages; $16.95

David Mamet's principal occupation is writing bruising plays (Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow) and film scripts (The Verdict, The Untouchables). Not surprisingly, the characters in these works are defined by what they do, not what they say. If their words count, it is because Mamet counts their words, using as few as possible to make his point and move his plot.

Some Freaks, like the author's previous collection of commentary, Writing in Restaurants, is a break from the demands of a difficult craft. It is also a chance for the playwright to mouth off and strike a number of disparate poses: the poker-playing resident of Vermont, the city boy who likes London tea shops, the gunner who belongs to both the N.R.A. and the A.C.L.U. and the provocateur who holds that women have no instinct for compromise and negotiation. Ranging widely, Mamet allows that "I am, by nature and profession, a browser." With the expanded confidence that comes with success and fame, he ambles in where Broadway and Hollywood angels fear to tread. It is fun to watch him keep his balance.

True, he recycles the familiar perception of Disneyland as a benign totalitarian community and echoes criticism of the Reform Judaism of his youth as an apology for being a Jew. But Mamet has a fresher approach to the politics of image and empty rhetoric. He equates Ronald Reagan's feeble explanations of the Iran arms-for-hostages deal with the answers of parents whose fogginess hides an implied threat: "If you want to remain a child, if you want to enjoy the privilege of life without fear, do not judge me."

Questions of leadership pop up frequently. Disappointed by Michael Dukakis' refusal "to stand on his hind legs and fight," Mamet drafts a strong and dignified speech that he and the reader would have liked to hear the Democratic candidate deliver. As a playwright, he argues that actors and directors should not freely interpret his scripts; as a film director (House of Games) he discovers that contrary to the cliche that making movies is a collaborative business, the enterprise is and must be strictly hierarchical. Having succeeded in the theatrical rat race against committees and long odds, it is not surprising that Mamet favors the individual over the collective. His view on using polls in politics: "a reversion to Mob Rule."

Do not bother to label Mamet a liberal or a conservative. He is a free radical attaching himself to whatever particle of reality promises further knowledge of the whole. At times he can be -- well, freakish. How about an interpretation of Superman as the most vulnerable of beings because his childhood had been destroyed? Outre? You bet. But as Mamet confesses, "I've always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact." R.Z.S.