Amazon’s description is the shortest and perhaps most simplistic summary of The Old Religion by David Mamet that I could find: “A historical narrative tells the story of Jewish factory owner Leo Frank, who in 1914 was wrongfully accused and convicted of raping a white Southern girl and eventually lynched by an angry mob.”
This book was one that I wasn’t prepared for, but I don’t know if one could prepare for this book. In the beginning, during the setup of the character based upon real-life accused Leo Frank, the book contains fragments of life and conversation that feel familiar.
These snippets of life and the conversation that goes along with it seem to be universal, but then again, they are not really conversations about anything. They are the filler things we do and say to take up the space, or at least they were in 1914 before our phones filled the void between – or worse, during – conversations.
But enough of my own philosophizing. This book has its own important things to say. The outcome of the eventual trial is pretty much a foregone conclusion, and why wouldn’t it be? There’s some anti-semitic slant to the prosecution, which isn’t much of a surprise. This book takes some shots at not only organized religion, but governance, patriotism, the law, and plenty of other preconceptions and assumptions the world often takes for granted.
This book is not a slam dunk for Serial podcast subscribers and crime drama fans. That’s because it spends so much time thinking about systems of organization and status like governance, judicial structure, and religious order, to say nothing of its dashes and dollops of fanaticism, that the case and facts are an afterthought.
As far as this book is concerned, Leo Frank was wrongly accused, and that’s that. I’ve not dug any further into the case, but I would guess that seems to be the standard assumption now from over a century ago.
However, from a psychological perspective with a religious bent, this book seems to be an appropriate insight into the wrongly-accused. That level of examination isn’t often seen by those of us not ambling over more crime content, excited by the proliferation of true crime as a genre. For us, this is new territory and a glimpse we’ve never seen.
For that reason, this book may be worth your time, but it’s not light reading. It’s good, insightful, thought-provoking work from the man who gave you Glengarry Glen Ross.
Read the Secret File of technical information and quotes from The Old Religion.