Introduction & Overview of American Buffalo by David Mamet

American Buffalo Introduction

Thorstein Veblen wrote that business wisdom, when reduced to its basest form, frequently resorts to "the judicious use of sabotage" an idea that David Mamet explores in his American Buffalo. First performed in Chicago in 1975, the play made its way to Broadway in 1977, Although Mamet had already achieved some success with his Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1972) the response to American Buffalo was highly favorable, despite the occasional harsh review. Many critics applauded Mamet's ability to capture the cadences and ambiguities in everyday American speech: Newsweek's Jack Kroll, for example, remarked that "Mamet is someone to listen to. He's that rare bird, an American playwright who's a language playwright." Edwin Wilson, writing in the Wall Street Journal, stated that Mamet "has a keen ear for the idiosyncrasies and the humor of everyday speech." While some critics dismissed American Buffalo (like the New York Daily News's Douglas Watt) as...
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