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

by David Mamet

Book Overview

The purpose of theater, like magic, like religion . . . is to inspire cleansing awe . What makes good drama? And why does drama matter in an age that is awash in information and entertainment? David Mamet, one of our greatest living playwrights, tackles these questions with bracing directness and aphoristic authority. He believes that the tendency to dramatize is essential to human nature, that we create drama out of everything from today's weather...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 037570423X
• ISBN13: 9780375704239
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Premium content, distractingly poor typography.

I just got this book this morning and these are preliminary reactions. First of all, the content rocks! Mamet suggestivey points out how we dramatize our lives in our banal exchanges with each other about impersonal things like the weather. In doing so we endow our lives with significance. The insight reminds me of how charged the world once was when I was in love for the first time. I am sure that the access that this small volume gives to an interesting mind repay reading and reading. This is one of those books that makes you think and makes you feel clever for the thinking the thoughts it guides you to.Unfortunately, I find the poor word-processed typography is distracting. One line has the the initial capital of a sentence squeezed up against the period of the preceding one. The next line has wide open spaces between the words. Paragraph after paragraph finishes with the dangling ends of hyphenated words. I would rather pay a dollar more for a clean view of a remarkable mind.Surely a respected publishing company can do better than just feed the author's data file to a poorly automatic compositing application and then print the results unperused by human eye?

An artistic credo well worth reading

While Mamet's booklet is essentially an exposition of opinions with little or no discourse, it is extremely thought provoking and provides ample fuel for thinking about drama - and art in general - as lying at the edge of reason. In a treatise that mirrors the three act structure he discusses, Mamet eloquently puts forth the idea that much of political drama, by instructing us what to think and feel, is mere melodrama and that "the theatre exists to deal with problems of the soul, with the mysteries of human life, not with its quotidian calamities." He assails avant-garde artists for taking "refuge in nonsense" and electing themselves "superior to reason," yet also criticizes the "hard-bitten rationalist who rails against religious tradition, against the historical niceties, against ritual large and small." "Three Uses of the Knife" is a book that will be read quickly, but will stick to the back of your mind for sometime afterwards.

I Like Mamet... Even if he is Unbelievably Opinionated

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.

Required Reading for Serious Playwrights - by David Bronczyk

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.

With a diamond stylus...

Mr. Mamet cuts and exposes the grooves that we both claim and deny. Three Uses of the Knife is much more than the subtitle "On the Nature and Purpose of Drama" would lead you to believe. (In fact, I am not quite sure that the Vanity Fair review that appears on the cover could have been written by someone who really read this book. It seems banal and patronizing = "[Mamet] brings his usual passion and provocation to his treatise on what makes good drama.")Anyway..far from a "treatise on...good drama", this is a book that calls for honest introspection and critical consideration of the pop drama of daily living (sports, politics, race, etc.). A case in point: I dare you to lay the current drama of internet madness in the context of this book -- It will be most revealing and this will become the best internet book you have read. O.K., nuff hyperbole -- the book is simply on target as a structure for social criticism. Whether you agree with his opinions or not, you can't shirk the debate and keep your integrity.It is a very short book well worth reading and re-reading.