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November
David Mamet's Oval Office satire depicts one day in the life of a beleaguered American commander-in-chief.
It's November in a Presidential election year, and incumbent Charles Smith's chances for reelection are looking grim. Approval ratings are down, his money's running out, and nuclear war might be imminent. Though his staff has thrown in the towel and his wife has begun to prepare for her post-White House life, Chuck isn't ready to give up just yet.
Amidst the biggest fight of his political career, the President has to find time to pardon a couple of turkeys—saving them from the slaughter before Thanksgiving—and this simple PR event inspires Smith to risk it all in attempt to win back public support.
With Mamet's characteristic no-holds-barred style, November is a scathingly hilarious take on the state of America today and the lengths to which people will go to win.
It's November in a Presidential election year, and incumbent Charles Smith's chances for reelection are looking grim. Approval ratings are down, his money's running out, and nuclear war might be imminent. Though his staff has thrown in the towel and his wife has begun to prepare for her post-White House life, Chuck isn't ready to give up just yet.
Amidst the biggest fight of his political career, the President has to find time to pardon a couple of turkeys—saving them from the slaughter before Thanksgiving—and this simple PR event inspires Smith to risk it all in attempt to win back public support.
With Mamet's characteristic no-holds-barred style, November is a scathingly hilarious take on the state of America today and the lengths to which people will go to win.
128 pages, Paperback
First published June 24, 2008
9 people are currently reading
203 people want to read
About the author
David Mamet
224 books738 followersDavid Alan Mamet is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for his exploration of masculinity.
As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).
Mamet's recent books include The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, an acerbic commentary on the movie business.
As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).
Mamet's recent books include The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, an acerbic commentary on the movie business.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
February 5, 2025
Is satire the only possible response to American politics or can we also enjoy it as comic spectacle?
June 1, 2020
This is a lacerating play satirizing Americana in all its forms (not just politics). I so wish I had seen Nathan Lane in the lead for which the cover alludes to! The only diminishing factor is our current political reality has become even crazier making this dated somewhat. However, I still laughed a lot which is exactly what “We the People” all need right now!
February 6, 2017
Finished reading this the day the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage which is a nice little piece of kismet...
Play is funny, but doesn't feel overly "Mamet" (but it's still a little fucken "Mamet"). Quite jaded, but I'm excited to see this when it gets produced locally later this year. Love how it's one set over ~24 hours. A stage manager & set designer's dream!
Play is funny, but doesn't feel overly "Mamet" (but it's still a little fucken "Mamet"). Quite jaded, but I'm excited to see this when it gets produced locally later this year. Love how it's one set over ~24 hours. A stage manager & set designer's dream!
Read
August 2, 2011I wish I had never read this. Don't be like me.
June 30, 2013
Some humorous moments, but has become somewhat dated since I saw it onstage in 2009. Better to see it live than on paper.
May 25, 2020
It might seem odd that the year Mamet declared that he was "no longer a brain-dead liberal" (in a belligerent op-ed with that phrase in the title) was the same year he decided what America really needed was a farce about a dim-witted President who's basically a caricature of George W. Bush and who loves to threaten everyone with being sent to Guantanamo-style military prisons. It's also a little ironic that the main difference between President Smith and the public image of GWB as a lost doofus is that Smith is also fantastically corrupt and will turn on a dime from mouthing respect for American traditions to denouncing them out of pettiness, since when you put all those things together you basically get our current chief executive, of whom Mamet is now a huge fan. But it all makes sense if you read past the title of that op-ed to see that he thinks what makes liberal bleeding hearts so "brain-dead" is a delusion that people are good, whereas an enlightened real man knows they are all terrible.
Everyone in November is terrible, in different and not very interesting ways; but Smith definitely seems to be closer to the author's heart because he's at least a little more creatively and unapologetically so, and all of the moments in the play that are actually funny (which, for me, happened about two or three times) come from seeing him be the only person who's really trying. The idea that he doesn't just misunderstand the silly tradition of pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey, but turns his misunderstanding into a scheme to extort a fortune from the turkey industry by threatening to pardon all the turkeys in America, is a pretty good joke. However, the fact that Mamet sets up that joke by saying Smith got the idea from the outrageous pardon record of Bill Clinton, even though Clinton was far outdone in that department by Reagan and Nixon, is very typical of the rest of the play in that it basically assumes the audience listens to a lot of right-wing talk radio and accepts that view of the world as common sense. From that point of view, Mamet might think he's being gallant in making Smith's lesbian speechwriter a basically sympathetic character in the sense that she's only trying to pursue her own self-interest and wouldn't try to destroy Thanksgiving if Smith weren't forcing her to (a subplot that makes absolutely no sense by the end of the play; Mamet seems to just forget at some point that Smith's original reasons for doing this no longer apply), but she's still a Limbaugh-style caricature in that she admits to being an America-hating radical at heart, while also writing her anti-patriarchal rhetoric in such a by-the-numbers way that she clearly doesn't give a crap about those principles either, and also since she's a woman she'll do anything to get a child. When it comes to the crazed Native American politician who's out for Smith's blood, we don't even get as much nuance as that—he's just a cliché-spouting cartoon, which is supposed to be funny all by itself because it's so politically incorrect. Being Mamet, there are some nice turns of phrase now and then but it's still painful, embarrassing stuff.
Possibly the worst role is the one person who isn't stupid, the President's right-hand man Brown, whose only reason for existing is to mildly say cynical but sensible things that Smith will ignore. I can't imagine a director or actor enjoying trying to make something out of this, but apparently people are still doing it, and I've even heard people say it's timely now—as if a stupid and venal President was something that took any imagination to depict in 2008 (I've also recently heard things like "wow, it even has a subplot about 'bird flu' from China", which I guess means that people have really short memories, since avian flu scares have been in the news many times since 1997). The main thing it accomplished for me was retroactively making Oleanna seem better.
Everyone in November is terrible, in different and not very interesting ways; but Smith definitely seems to be closer to the author's heart because he's at least a little more creatively and unapologetically so, and all of the moments in the play that are actually funny (which, for me, happened about two or three times) come from seeing him be the only person who's really trying. The idea that he doesn't just misunderstand the silly tradition of pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey, but turns his misunderstanding into a scheme to extort a fortune from the turkey industry by threatening to pardon all the turkeys in America, is a pretty good joke. However, the fact that Mamet sets up that joke by saying Smith got the idea from the outrageous pardon record of Bill Clinton, even though Clinton was far outdone in that department by Reagan and Nixon, is very typical of the rest of the play in that it basically assumes the audience listens to a lot of right-wing talk radio and accepts that view of the world as common sense. From that point of view, Mamet might think he's being gallant in making Smith's lesbian speechwriter a basically sympathetic character in the sense that she's only trying to pursue her own self-interest and wouldn't try to destroy Thanksgiving if Smith weren't forcing her to (a subplot that makes absolutely no sense by the end of the play; Mamet seems to just forget at some point that Smith's original reasons for doing this no longer apply), but she's still a Limbaugh-style caricature in that she admits to being an America-hating radical at heart, while also writing her anti-patriarchal rhetoric in such a by-the-numbers way that she clearly doesn't give a crap about those principles either, and also since she's a woman she'll do anything to get a child. When it comes to the crazed Native American politician who's out for Smith's blood, we don't even get as much nuance as that—he's just a cliché-spouting cartoon, which is supposed to be funny all by itself because it's so politically incorrect. Being Mamet, there are some nice turns of phrase now and then but it's still painful, embarrassing stuff.
Possibly the worst role is the one person who isn't stupid, the President's right-hand man Brown, whose only reason for existing is to mildly say cynical but sensible things that Smith will ignore. I can't imagine a director or actor enjoying trying to make something out of this, but apparently people are still doing it, and I've even heard people say it's timely now—as if a stupid and venal President was something that took any imagination to depict in 2008 (I've also recently heard things like "wow, it even has a subplot about 'bird flu' from China", which I guess means that people have really short memories, since avian flu scares have been in the news many times since 1997). The main thing it accomplished for me was retroactively making Oleanna seem better.
March 3, 2023
This review was written in January 2008, when I saw the play on Broadway:
David Mamet's new play November is a serious letdown. Yes, it's very funny; it's as full of one-liners as any Neil Simon play and in places it's as unabashedly and poetically profane as the early classics of Mamet himself. Trouble is, what Mamet is writing about here isn't one bit funny. Now, I'm not saying that the state of our union couldn't benefit from some carefully and cannily crafted satirization; far from it. But November is as far from satire as American Idol is from reality: Mamet's targets here are so ill-defined and so scattershot that the whole enterprise simply collapses for being so hollow.
The premise is that it's a few days before election, and President Chuck Smith is doing so poorly in the polls that the party has pulled almost all of his remaining air time and his chief speech writer has already completed his concession speech. At the very beginning of the play, Smith asks his lawyer, Archer Brown, why he's so unpopular, and Brown tells him it's because everybody hates him because he's fucked the country up so badly. Mamet has saddled Smith with so many qualities that he's unconvincing as a human being and unidentifiable as any particular political figure that we might be familiar with. He spews obscenities the way Nixon was supposed to have done, and shares some of Tricky Dick's near-pathological obsession with winning and with posterity. But he's presented as a total screw-up and a dummy, on the order of the joke "W" that Will Ferrell used to do on Saturday Night Live. Except that he's also shown to be as cunning and crafty as Karl Rove ever was.
Let me be clear: Mamet wants us to believe that his president is dumb enough not to know why his advisors can't suddenly make it rain on election day, but shrewd enough to concoct a scheme to extort 200 million dollars from the turkey lobby. (For the record, I never quite followed this plan, but the Turkey Lobby Guy caves in and gives Smith the money.)
I guess it's kind of amusing, except that the situation in Washington is so not amusing right now that it's hard to feel cathartic or even just a little bit relieved by enjoying a belly laugh at stuff like this that has no grounding in any kind of reality.
David Mamet's new play November is a serious letdown. Yes, it's very funny; it's as full of one-liners as any Neil Simon play and in places it's as unabashedly and poetically profane as the early classics of Mamet himself. Trouble is, what Mamet is writing about here isn't one bit funny. Now, I'm not saying that the state of our union couldn't benefit from some carefully and cannily crafted satirization; far from it. But November is as far from satire as American Idol is from reality: Mamet's targets here are so ill-defined and so scattershot that the whole enterprise simply collapses for being so hollow.
The premise is that it's a few days before election, and President Chuck Smith is doing so poorly in the polls that the party has pulled almost all of his remaining air time and his chief speech writer has already completed his concession speech. At the very beginning of the play, Smith asks his lawyer, Archer Brown, why he's so unpopular, and Brown tells him it's because everybody hates him because he's fucked the country up so badly. Mamet has saddled Smith with so many qualities that he's unconvincing as a human being and unidentifiable as any particular political figure that we might be familiar with. He spews obscenities the way Nixon was supposed to have done, and shares some of Tricky Dick's near-pathological obsession with winning and with posterity. But he's presented as a total screw-up and a dummy, on the order of the joke "W" that Will Ferrell used to do on Saturday Night Live. Except that he's also shown to be as cunning and crafty as Karl Rove ever was.
Let me be clear: Mamet wants us to believe that his president is dumb enough not to know why his advisors can't suddenly make it rain on election day, but shrewd enough to concoct a scheme to extort 200 million dollars from the turkey lobby. (For the record, I never quite followed this plan, but the Turkey Lobby Guy caves in and gives Smith the money.)
I guess it's kind of amusing, except that the situation in Washington is so not amusing right now that it's hard to feel cathartic or even just a little bit relieved by enjoying a belly laugh at stuff like this that has no grounding in any kind of reality.
January 10, 2022
Interesting
Better than a lot of the comedies written for the theater. Interesting concept. However, our rural community theater (@ continuously for nearly 50-years!) will not be happy with the MANY MANY f-words dropped constantly, so we'll need to change some out with the use of hells, screw yous and damns. For some reason, our patrons accept that! Should be a fun production.
Better than a lot of the comedies written for the theater. Interesting concept. However, our rural community theater (@ continuously for nearly 50-years!) will not be happy with the MANY MANY f-words dropped constantly, so we'll need to change some out with the use of hells, screw yous and damns. For some reason, our patrons accept that! Should be a fun production.
April 10, 2025
Some parts of this play are remarkably prescient, and some are dated in ways that would have been entirely unpredictable in 2008. Almost all are totally insane. The presidency and the country have changed so much since 2008 that I think this play will struggle to ever find its footing again. It was a reasonably fun farce, but at this point, it's also just a curious cultural artifact.
October 18, 2024
It's hard to believe that the same playwright who wrote the masterpiece Glengarry Glen Ross wrote this ludicrous script. The play has a few funny one-liners, but the gist of it is so utterly unbelievable, that whatever humor there is rings hollow for its lack of connection to a realistic premise.
August 13, 2018
Sometimes it's hard to laugh when it feels closer to reality than it was in 2008... but as comedies go, it's really a smart one.
January 30, 2022
I love David Mamet. This made me laugh out loud several times. I’d pay to see Nathan Lane in this!
July 17, 2022
I mean, it's Mamet so the skill is there, but the premise doesn't really hang and in a way it reads like a student play.
January 28, 2018
The usual Mamet dialog and male banter, bonding. Somewhat dated.
December 11, 2018
So, for a long time, I thought you had to finish any book put in front of you, or any book you’ve started. It wasn’t until my first year out of college, when my college roommate’s mom enlightened me with the knowledge that I didn’t need to finish any book I didn’t want to. This DEFINITELY fell in that category.
Firstly, as a Mamet, the dialogue flowed very quickly, which may be one of the only things I enjoyed. It felt performatively racist and brisk, which again seems par for the course with him. I found myself really liking the characters presented, but not loving the overall plot.
Firstly, as a Mamet, the dialogue flowed very quickly, which may be one of the only things I enjoyed. It felt performatively racist and brisk, which again seems par for the course with him. I found myself really liking the characters presented, but not loving the overall plot.
Read
November 29, 2025Oh my. Wow.
(Actually ahead of its time.)
(Actually ahead of its time.)
January 15, 2012
I picked this one up at the library, opened it right there at stayed at the library reading, unable to put it down. This is my first Mamet play, and in spite of the crazy-satirical premise, I still expected it to be essentially dark, but it's really not. One can call it depressing only for the way it so accurately portrays modern American politics, but it's hysterically funny and, in the end, not at all unkind. I know that this is the play that caused Mamet to write his famous "Why I am no longer a brain dead liberal" column and come out as a newly-minted conservative (although the provocative title was not of his choosing). However, this story truly has no political slant, except for being most decidedly non-PC. I recommend it to anyone even marginally interested in politics- just be aware it does use some fairly colorful language (though in a realistic rather than gratuitous way).
January 28, 2015
With NOVEMBER David Mamet flexes his funny bone yet again—this time during the election month of a president falling out of public favor. As President Chuck Smith struggles to find the courage to fight for a second term, the reader laughs at the dismal state of affairs that is politics in America. This satirical take on elections leaves the reader emotionally connected to Mamet’s president who seems such a fish-out-of-water in the tumultuous world of American politics. Things get even funnier when the traditional PR stunt of pardoning turkeys for Thanksgiving not only reinvigorates President Smith, but leaves him more determined to win than ever before. A perfect read for Mamet beginners and veterans alike.
March 4, 2009
If I could give it more stars I would. I do not think I have ever read any book more outrageously funny than this play, nor have I laughed aloud more while reading. A shocking and satisfying satire of the Bush presidency, I could hear Nathan Lane's voice in my head as I read Mamet's President's lines and was only mildly surprised to hear that I had failed to recognize him on the cover and that Lane was starring in the play on Broadway. Perhaps it was written with Lane in mind? Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful; the best play and one of the finest books I have ever read.
January 20, 2011
I actually saw this on Broadway before reading it and I found it absolutely hilarious and a showcase of David Mamet's biting humor that I fell in love with when I first saw Glengarry Glen Ross, but it's not for everyone as it's vulgar and gives you insight into President Charles Smith behind closed doors where the cameras don't follow, so you get to see his character candidly, which turns out to be less politically correct than one would hope from a President of the US. Still, I found it interesting and very funny.
January 14, 2009
Mamet’s newest play is a biting, fierce, farcical satire that skewers, among other things, public relations, Native American casinos, overseas adoption, gay marriage, and almost every aspect of the Presidential office. It’s a pretty blatant, heavy-handed piece, but it does manage some thought-provoking subtleties amid the take-no-prison punches.
December 20, 2021
5 years later and my review has not changed. A satirical look at the President and his attempt to pardon turkeys but it's three fucking acts and it just becomes a headache with the President yelling a lot and being a dick. It's probably much better in person (seeing Nathan Lane as the President would have been a treat) but reading it's a tired exercise.
July 6, 2016
Enjoyed this even though it was time-specific, ultimately. Was still good to read a new/ish Mamet script. Some funny lines too. And just as you think he might be going soft you get a line like, "I'm gonna cut your fucken heart out and eat it in front of your dying eyes". Would have been good to see a production of this at the time.
January 5, 2009
I cannot believe Nathan Lane played this part, yet I somehow feel so glad he did. A close source said several people at one viewing left the show in the first act, apparently surprised that this wasn't a cheerful song and dance role for Mr. Lane.
November 6, 2013
In typical Mamet style, this play is fast paced, witty, and points out the absurdity of the mundane. With clarity and insight, he highlights the machinations of U.S. politics with verve and humor. I will never think of turkey pardons in the same light ever again.
March 17, 2014
Sorry but the satire which can be found in this book cannot impress anybody. It just lacks that amusement spirit that I am expecting to receive from this kind of books. But, on the bright side: the story is nice and the characters feel somehow real.
April 26, 2016
Pretty funny and makes you think of all the silly nonsense that is politics. Even in our highest office! This play is good for this time of year. Looking forward to seeing it at one of our local theatres here in Denver!
December 29, 2008
I had higher hopes for this one....
April 9, 2010
Wish I could have seen this on Broadway. I bet Laurie Metcalfe's performance was wonderful!
December 11, 2010
This fast-paced satire provides some good laughs, but goes a little overboard in its final pages, resulting in an unsatisfyingly over-the-top conclusion.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews