How Good Is David Mamet, Anyway?

I’m beginning to see David Mamet as the Andy Warhol of theater. They are, of course, outwardly as different as a crew cut is from a lopsided wig, but they link in the superficial essentials. Both, for example, claim that their art reflects the culture, or America, in this convenient way: if you find nothing there, so much the better. Mr. Mamet explained to the New Yorker recently, “As Bettelheim says in The Uses of Enchantment, the more you leave out, the more we see ourselves in the picture, the more we project our own thoughts onto it.”