Jafsie and John Henry: Essays - Hardcover

Mamet, David

3.58

45 ratings by Goodreads

9780684841205: Jafsie and John Henry: Essays

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684841207 ISBN 13: 9780684841205

Publisher: Free Press, 1999

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David Mamet has said that if he hadn't found a life in the theater, it is very likely he would have become a criminal. In Jafsie and John Henry the master improviser takes on a range of roles and personae in a lively and personal way. Though older and wiser than when he first shocked theatergoers with the play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Mamet remains one of the most provocative and iconoclastic voices in American writing today, with an idiom so distinct, so American, that it defies comparison. Mamet in this diverse collection turns his unique lens on subjects ranging from houses to Hollywood producers. As the writer turns fifty, he not only shares his reflections on the nature of creativity and the challenges and rewards of aging but delves into his most intimate obsessions. From a description of the labyrinthine psychology of poker to sharp sallies on moviemaking gibberish and the meaning of macho, Jafsie and John Henry is knit together by Mamet's unique perspective and inimitably spare wit. Oscar Wilde, the tower of Babel, The House Committee on Un-American Activities, Jewish scripture, police corruption, the art of acting, and single-malt scotch are all grist for the mill of Mamet's quicksilver mind. He reminisces about his first car, muses on the Lindbergh trial, laments the loss of the art of knifemaking, and lambastes Hollywood culture. The perennial outsider, David Mamet gives us an inside look at the unique world of an American icon and an unromantic perspective on the changing nature of creativity in an artist's life.

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About the Author:

David Mamet is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of many plays, including Sexual Perversity in Chicago, American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Oleanna. His screenplays include The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Verdict, Hoffa, The Untouchables, House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner, and Wag the Dog. He is also the author of a children's book, Warm and Cold; five volumes of essays, including Some Freaks and Writing In Restaurants; a book of poems; and several novels, including Wilson, The Village, and The Old Religion. He has served as Artist-in-Residence at Goddard College, Artistic Director of the St. Nicholas Theatre Company, guest lecturer at the University of Chicago, and Associate Professor of Film at Columbia University. He lives in Vermont.

From Publishers Weekly:

The first of 27 essays in this grab bag of characteristically taut pieces is called "Looking at Fifty," and perhaps no words more aptly foreshadow the pieces to come. For this latest effort by Mamet, largely a collection of previously published work, is one part wistful reminiscence, one part curmudgeonly (and often Luddite) rant and one part seasoned social commentary. Mamet, often taken to task as a playwright and screenwriter for his superficial characters, here flashes impressive depth. In "L.A. Houses," he skewers cultural philisitinism by describing a director who wanted him to write a screenplay of Moby-Dick from the point of view of the whale. Remembrances of a Chicago boyhood (walking aimlessly down a highway), his first car (a devastatingly powerful Karmann Ghia) and a tragic game of poker (in which he unconsciously threw a hand "to punish myself") give the book a refreshingly personal feel. And his anti-technology comments, despite smacking of a quaint traditionalism (he's prone to criticizing the pervasiveness of "information" by asking "Where is the romance in it? Where is the discovery?"), are generally thoughtful enough to merit serious consideration. He proposes, for instance, that our adherence to machines stems not merely from a desire to make our lives easier but from a fundamental need to be enslaved by another power. Rounding out the collection are essays about the roots of anti-Semitism and an Anglophilic gem, "Scotch Malt Whisky Society," in which the playwright uses his trademark ear for dialogue to describe the verbal thrust-and-parry of Scotch tasters in Edinburgh. Cleanly written, by turns profoundly personal and just plain profound, Mamet's collection offers the spectacle of a fierce intelligence at work and at play in the world.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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