Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

David Mamet is a genius. I sat down with this book, thinking it would be discussing the drama of a play, or theatre, and it does, but more than that, it dissects the drama of life in general.

I am not a big philosophy buff, but I read this book in one (and 1/2) sitting. Then my husband read it right after me.

I think that this book follows Mamet's M.O. to a tee - It is very erudite, yet I find myself laughing. His writing is very thought provoking in this essay on using your writing to convey meaning. It is not his best book, but it is certainly worthy of the 1 hour it takes to read.

I think this book, as other Mamet books, benefits by his ironclad belief that there is one way to do things. He may actually argue that his POV is not consistent with my last sentence, but he is such an ornery S.O.B., that it is simply a pleasure to listen to him go off on his tirades and tangents.

Will this book allow you to write better? - Maybe. Will this book thoroughly entertain you and enlighten you with Mamet's POV on the issue? - Absolutely. It reads almost like fiction.

In 3 Uses of the Knife, Mamet has helped me realize that the difference between provoking an audience and manipulating them is the difference between art and salesmanship. We see precious little of one, and an overabundance of the other. Mamet reminds us that theatre is not a product to be consumed, but a lense through which we may understand a complex world, a world seeking to distract us from our own lives. This book is art.

Mamet is known as a pioneer of the theatre. He was one of the first to use pure dialogue as action, thus begat Tarantino and a million other "gritty" talk-fests. But here, Mamet writes three essays about WHY we like to watch. He analyzes the human nature of wanting to view drama: be it Hamlet, the weather, or a close football game. They all captivate us. But why? Like the writings of Peter Brook, or Stanislavski, each reading bears new fruit. Some of it will pull the rug out from under the "hero-worshipping" theatre crowd. Some will give a sigh of relief. All of it is revealing.

As an aspiring playwright currently developing a script, I found Mamet's book to be an invigorating and succinct investigation of the function of true drama ("The theater exists to deal with the problems of the soul, with the mysteries of human life, not with its quotidian calamities."). For me, the most arresting and appealing aspect of Mamet's aesthetic philosophy is his candid unearthing of the roots of our dramatic urge in the collective human psyche. This urge manifests itself in our natural impulse - indeed, "our unique survival tool" - to structure our perceptions of the world into `event-complication-denouement' sequences, in other words, to seek a three-act structure (the book's title, with a hat-tip to Leadbelly, derives from this progression). Mamet cites Aristotle in delineating a protagonist/hero's dogged and single-minded pursuit of his/her goal within this framework of a play.

Also intriguing in "Knife" is Mamet's association of theater with myth, magic, religion, and dreams - all of which address the most fundamental non-rational human needs, compulsions, and feelings of powerlessness in the face of death.

"Knife" is a bracing must-read, and left me hungry for more.