Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama
by David Mamet

List Price: $11.95
Our Price: $4.00
You Save: $7.95 (67%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

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

Book Review: Required Reading for Serious Playwrights - by David Bronczyk
Summary: 5 Stars

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.

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

The purpose of theater, like magic like religion?ids to inspire cleansing awe. With bracing directness and aphoristic authority, one of our greatest living playwrights addresses the questions: What makes good drama? And why does drama matter in an age that is awash in information and entertainment? David Mamet believes that the tendency to dramatize is essential to human nature, that we create drama out of everything from today?s weather to next year?s elections. But the highest expression of this drive remains the theater.
         With a cultural range that encompasses Shakespeare, Bretcht, and Ibsen, Death of a Salesman and Bad Day at Black Rock, Mamet shows us how to distinguish true drama from its false variants. He considers the impossibly difficult progression between one act and the next and the mysterious function of the soliloquy. The result, in Three Uses of the Knife, is an electrifying treatise on the playwright?s art that is also a strikingly original work of moral and aesthetic philosophy. 

It is ... essential to the healthy political campaign that the issues be largely or perhaps totally symbolic--i.e., non-quantifiable. Peace With Honor, Communists in the State Department, Supply Side Economics, Recapture the Dream, Bring Back the Pride--these are the stuff of pageant. They are not social goals; they are, as Alfred Hitchcock told us, the MacGuffin.... The less specific the qualities of the MacGuffin are, the more interested the audience will be.... A loose abstraction allows audience members to project their own desires onto an essentially featureless goal.

Although occasionally academic, the overall tone of the lectures is consistent with Mamet's no-nonsense manner of speech. He has no time for obfuscation and little time for repetition, save when he must absolutely employ it for emphasis. He is passionate about good theater, and passionate about the truth. 3 Uses of the Knife makes an excellent companion piece to his True and False, which addressed similar philosophical matters in the form of advice on the actor's craft.

Entertainment Books

• Books > Subjects
• Literature & Fiction > Drama > United States
• Education & Reference > Writing
• New & Used Textbooks > Humanities > Literature > American Literature
• English Literature
• Creative Writing & Composition