SOME FREAKS by David Mamet (Penguin:...

SOME FREAKS by David Mamet (Penguin: $7.95). The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “American Buffalo,” “Speed-the-Plow” et al offers his opinions on a wide variety of subjects in this collection of essays. Mamet can be eloquent--when he muses on the problems of growing up as an assimilated Jew without a real ethnic identity, or when he attacks George Bush’s divisive campaign rhetoric in a fantasy speech for Michael Dukakis. But in many of these pieces, he comes across as a vain and cranky writer, fulminating against actors who dare to try to add something to the text of a play. And in the self-glorifying account of making the film “House of Games,” Mamet becomes downright insufferable. A difficult and sometimes challenging book by an outspoken, talented and probably difficult man.