SOURCE: Fleming, Juliet. “Footnotes on Mars.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5055 (18 February 2000): 22.

In the following review, Fleming summarizes the stylistic elements of Wilson.

The most arresting thing about David Mamet's new novel [Wilson] is its dust jacket. The front cover (reproduced here) displays the trompe l'oeil effect, complete with coffee stains, of a pile of comics—all without year-dates, but each in the unlocatably “dated” style of comic art. The magazine on top, Bongazine, shows its price (“Still only 4c. Slightly higher on Mars”) and features, against a background of spinning planets and imploding stars, an egg-headed intellectual and a dog wearing the Faber and Faber logo as an identity disc. Another comic contains “Free … at no extra cost … 2 Pairs of Magic Specs.” Signalling the novel's concern with intellectual property and intellectual detritus, with naive and cynical misperception, and with a commodity fetishism so advanced as to render impossible...