A good deal of David Mamet's tough-guy tales are drawn from or inspired by his formative years in Chicago. "I do not know how I escaped becoming a criminal," Mamet writes/boasts at the start of his latest collection of short essays, Jafsie And John Henry. Indeed, Mamet's early exposure to criminals and con jobs explicitly informs many of his plays and scripts—he's obsessed with crooked card games and knives—but he might be doing more than mining his childhood for material: Mamet, the ever-acidic dispenser of biting dialogue, may very well miss his youth and the constantly new experiences that came with it. An overt tone of nostalgia permeates Jafsie And John Henry, obviously provoked by Mamet's 50th birthday, even if the author goes through great pains to dismiss the notion of the midlife crisis as some sort of invented cultural hurdle. But for all his cynical and cranky objections to the abject romanticism of turning 50, Mamet sure brings his age up a lot. It's a clever trick to write of matters you supposedly won't want to write about, and Mamet is a clever writer. Given any other framing device, the essays in Jafsie And John Henry would have remained mere colorful anecdotes, but taken in tandem with the author's half-century mark, many of these pointed stories sound like trips down memory lane, albeit prose trips that still possess the requisite hyper-aware and forcefully direct Mamet voice. Whether writing about buying a house, attending a Scottish whiskey-tasting, or denouncing stainless-steel pocket knives, Mamet frequently connects his current travails and experiences with those of his past. The only essays not really rooted to earlier experiences are a handful of bitter pieces aimed at Hollywood producers, which, though often funny, are pretty didactic. But Mamet, as evinced by his distinct body of work, is one writer who's absolutely sure of what he likes and tenacious in terms of what he wants, so let the man complain. A more curious facet of Mamet's maturity, though, is his religious convictions. Like many Jews, Mamet's faith has solidified over the years, and his brief discussions of Jewish identity are pretty pointed. In his ruminations on religion, Mamet's confident elitism (intellectual, aesthetic, whatever) and unbending dedication to what he believes in reveal a man who's finally coming to grips with the world around him rather than the world in which he grew up.