Pip: Ghost Dog, where we read so you don't have to — though today's post makes a reasonable case that sometimes you shouldn't bother reading at all.

Mara: Today we're covering a book review from Benn Bell — one that sits at the intersection of craft, politics, and the particular disappointment of a writer you admire going badly off the rails.

Pip: Let's start with the book itself — David Mamet, Recessional, and the question of what happens when a genuinely talented writer loses the plot.

Book Review: Recessional by David Mamet

Mara: The tension here is real: Mamet wrote Glengarry Glen Ross. He wrote The Verdict. His dramatic work is undeniable. So what do you do with a collection of short essays that flatly contradicts the intelligence behind those plays?

Pip: The review doesn't bury the lead. The verdict on the essays is that they are, quote, "loaded with misinformation, lies, and incorrect conclusions."

Mara: And that framing matters, because the review isn't dismissing Mamet wholesale. It's making a distinction — the playwright versus the essayist. The craft that produced great drama is simply not present in these three-and-four-page pieces.

Pip: Which makes the moments of genuine agreement more interesting, not less. There are quotes in here worth sitting with. On screenwriting: "The script exists to describe to the cameraman what to shoot and to tell the actors what to say. Everything else is besides the point. The nature of a script is a recipe."

Mara: That's a clean, useful definition — and the review accepts it as very sensible. There's also real warmth for Mamet's line about Beckett being the greatest dramatist since Shakespeare, with the addition of Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee as possible company.

Pip: So the review is doing something careful: holding the good lines and the bad arguments at the same time rather than throwing the whole book out.

Mara: Right — and then the politics arrive. Mamet argues the left is the tyrannical force in American life, that the left tried to steal the election. The review pushes back directly: domestic terror attacks, January 6th, Bill Maher calling Mamet out on his own show, Mamet responding with "skip that page."

Pip: "Skip that page" is not a rebuttal. It is, however, an accidental summary of the review's final recommendation about the book as a whole.

Mara: The review lands there too — suggesting we might skip the entire book. But the craft observations survive. The Aristotle and Campbell references Mamet cites as essential drama reading even make the reviewer's own TBR list.

Pip: So what we're left with is a writer who can still identify the right tools — he just stopped using them.

Mara: The craft holds even when the argument doesn't — that's the tension the review keeps returning to.

Pip: Next time, more from Ghost Dog on whatever Benn Bell reads, watches, or decides to push back on. We'll be here.