"In this country of incessant obbligatos accompanying all activity--music in offices, and elevators, tapes in cars, radios in restaurants--Mamet has heard the ultimate Muzak, the dissonant din of people yammering at one another and not connecting. He is a cosmic eavesdropper who's caught the American aphasia," wrote Jack Kroll in Newsweek (28 February 1977). The recipient of this plaudit is David Mamet, who has had nearly twenty plays produced since 1972 and has been heralded as the most important new playwright to come out of the 1970s. His reputation has been built on a large body of work, his first national recognition coming with the Broadway opening of American Buffalo in February 1977. Although the play received mixed critical notices, nearly everyone conceded that Mamet possessed a unique ear for American idiom. Christopher Porterfield of Time said that Mamet recreated a "forlornly eloquent" language with "cadences of loneliness and fear."

Mamet attributes...