Make-Believe Town: Essays and Remembrances

by David Mamet

Fifteen essays by a renowned playwright and author feature such titles as "Girl Copy" and "Lessons to Be Learned from Cards" and consider such topics as gambling, acting, gender, and how poker reflects everyday life.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Writing

207 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1996

About the author

David 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.

Reviews

[Emran Moustafa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This dude would fuck with some hypotheticals

[Joss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly entertaining at times, but will probably please die-hard Mamet fans, as these books would. I personally found that I did not always care enough. The most interesting parts to me were the ones that did not mention events current at the time of writing.

[V D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the easiest the book to put together for Mamet’s publisher, ‘let’s see what chicken scratch notes I have stashed away...’

Best word of advice from Mamet during his career:

There is an old Yiddish curse, ‘May you be in a lawsuit, and maybe you be right’

[Jackie Burlingame · Rating 2 out of 5]

I REALLY wanted to like this book. Mamet is a genius, and I hold his films in high regard. But. I had to skim most of this. It was difficult to wade through his musings on various topics, including how “Schindler’s List” is an exploitation film.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entertaining stories and some provocative perspectives on significant topics.

[Stuart Mcpherson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, often frustrating and hypocritical but always written with conviction from his point of view. At its best when tied to his first hand experience.

[Josh Freund · Rating 2 out of 5]

My first exposure to Mamet outside of a movie or two. I get the sense he’s not for me. Came off as a bit of a cranky old man at times, with takes that had me saying “I’m… not sure that follows.”

[Meema · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know how many people know about the fantastic little movie called State and Main. Something of a meta movie, a behind the scenes antics of a movie crew and their tragicomedic attempts at keeping it together. That's how I encountered David Mamet anyway.

Later I came to know and realise he is an important playwright, dramatist, wordsmith etc etc. He has other more famous ( read successful) movies under his belt too but from his writings, I have found him primarily to be a writer.

This is a book of musings, something of a time capsule reflecting the time and place Mamet lived through. For example, the piece in which he bemoans the breakdown of the concept of hanging out and the erosion of the public houses, which are swiftly replaced by bars with giant TVs for people to congregate and watch. I wonder how he feels about this topic now.

There are a few pieces on the craft of writing, movies, and screenplays which are very interesting and thought provoking. Like another American great, Philip Roth, Mamet has spent significant amount of time pondering about and digesting and reflecting and taking a stance on being a #Jew in America in particular. I like reading that sort of stuff,on race and ethnicity and identity, and perhaps that's why I have liked much of this book. There is a kind of clarity in the writing that is quite refreshing and above all, you will go away from it thinking. What's better?

[Ivan Mulcahy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore Mamet's dialogue in film or plays when it's mannered, staccato, fierce. The Hollywood producers in Speed the Plow. The student in Oleanna. Every fucking one of the fucking characters in Glengarry Glen Ross. My father was a self-made salesman for most of his life. I lent him the DVD of GGR. Next time I visited my parents they spoke of the viewing of the movie like it was a horrific car accident filled with glass and blood and dead babies that they had been forced to witness. I don't think I ever heard of a film effecting people more. My father particularly said that nothing he ever saw captured the salesman's fear of failure like Mamet's script.