I wrote about David Mamet’s rather atrocious new book for the Washington Post. A sample:
Mamet in “Recessional” is a lazy writer. There are charming passages here and there, particularly when he’s reflecting on his professional experience or musing on the challenges of being an artist. But there’s a slapdash quality to it all, an unearned confidence that his writerly instincts are so potent that a few anecdotes or observations strung together, tied up at the end with a callback to the beginning, will naturally coalesce into profundity. That associative, jump-cutting style can work, but you have to know how to do it, and even then you have to work at it. Mamet seems beyond working at it, and I presume beyond receiving or accepting honest feedback from editors or friends.