In David Mamet's play, now on Broadway starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles, a male college instructor and his female student sit down to discuss her grades and in a terrifyingly short time become the participants in a modern reprise of the Inquisition. Innocuous remarks suddenly turn damning. Socratic dialogue gives way to heated assault. And the relationship between a somewhat fatuous teacher and his seemingly hapless pupil turns into a fiendishly accurate X-ray of the mechanisms of power, censorship, and abuse. Paperback.