American Buffalo | Essays and Criticism

  • Exploring Characters' Beliefs

    In this essay, the author examines the ways in which Mamet's play explores the characters' beliefs in "The God of Business."

  • Ethical Perversity in America: Some Observations on David Mamet's American Buffalo

    Barbera argues in this essay that, despite characters who lack true intellect, Mamet's play is a work of high intellectual content that adroitly chronicles a facet of American existence.

  • Albee and Mamet The War of the Words

    While finding Mamet's knack for dialogue admirable, critic Rogoff complains that Mamet's play apes crime films from the 1940s and 1950s without the benefit of those dramas' clever storylines. Rogoff acknowledges that Mamet achieves his dramatic goals—although those goals are too modest for the critic's tastes.