SOURCE: "Betrayals," in The New Yorker, Vol. LXX, No. 23, August 1, 1994, pp. 70-3.

[Lahr is a prizewinning American critic, nonfiction writer, playwright, novelist, biographer, and editor. In the review below, he offers a highly favorable assessment of The Cryptogram, lauding the work's dramatic intensity and focus on betrayal, death, and emotional abuse.]

David Mamet, like the characters he puts onstage, tells us only so much about himself, and no more. We know, for instance, that he likes tricksters and magic. We know that he enjoys guys' things, like hunting and poker and cigars. We also know that he's divorced, and that, like any divorced parent, he has had to live with the grief of imposing on his children the bewildering pain of separation which he felt when his own parents divorced. In "The Rake," the first chapter of a 1992 memoir entitled The Cabin: Reminiscence and Diversions, Mamet has provided...