The Cabin: Reminiscence and Diversions Paperback - 1993

From the jacket flap

In these mordant, elegant, and often disquieting essays, the internationally acclaimed dramatist creates a sort of autobiography by strobe light, one that is both mysterious and starkly revealing.
The pieces in The Cabin are about places and things: the suburbs of Chicago, where as a boy David Mamet helplessly watched his stepfather terrorize his sister; New York City, where as a young man he had to eat his way through a mountain of fried matzoh to earn a night of sexual bliss. They are about guns, campaign buttons, and a cabin in the Vermont woods that stinks of wood smoke and kerosene -- and about their associations of pleasure, menace, and regret.
The resulting volume may be compared to the plays that have made Mamet famous: it is finely crafted and deftly timed, and its precise language carries an enormous weight of feeling.

Media reviews

"Enormous powers of observation...he has an ear for language."

-- LA Weekly



"A very worthwhile collection...Mamet walks a line between provocation and enticement, and its precariousness almost always compels attention."

-- Newsday

"A delight...there is a lean, masculine quality to his essays."

-- Baltimore Sun

Citations

• Publishers Weekly, 10/25/1993, Page 0