SOURCE: Levi, Jonathan. “Following in His Footnotes.” Los Angeles Times (6 January 2002): R4.

In the following review, Levi finds Wilson obtuse.

It was Alfred North Whitehead who said “all philosophy is merely footnotes to Plato.” But it has taken David Mamet to write a footnote positing Aristotle as the true author of “Dink Stover at Yale.” This observation is only one of the many instances of serendipity in Mamet's latest work of fiction, a curio titled Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources.

Presumably written several hundred years from now, Wilson is a super-academic commentary on the ur-historical text of future historians—the memories of a woman named Ginger who may have been the wife of President Woodrow Wilson or a later President Wilson.

Ginger's memories, preserved on hard drive, are all that remain of the recorded history of man well into the 21st century, following a computer crash of...