|
|
List Price: $11.00 Amazon.com's Price: $8.80 You Save: $2.20 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 808.2 EAN: 9780375704239 Edition: 1st Vintage Books Ed ISBN: 037570423X Label: Vintage Manufacturer: Vintage Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 96 Publication Date: June 13, 2000 Publisher: Vintage Release Date: June 13, 2000 Studio: Vintage Editorial Review: Amazon.com: Playwright David Mamet's three lectures at Columbia University are ostensibly about issues of dramatic structure, but as they unfold, and Mamet continually explores the relationship between dramatic structure and the lives we live, much broader concerns are revealed. Here, for example, is Mamet on political propaganda: 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. Product Description: What makes good drama? And why does drama matter in an age that is awash in information and entertainment? With bracing directness and aphoristic grace, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Glengarry Glen Ross delivers a thrillingly original treatise on his art. To David Mamet, human beings are drama-creating animals who impose narrative structures on everything from today's weather to next year's elections. Mamet distinguishes true drama from its false variants, unravels the infamous "Second-Act Problem," amd considers the mysterious persistence of the soliloquy. Three Uses of the Knife is an inspired guide for any playwright or theatergoer that doubles as a trenchant work of moral and aesthetic philosophy. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - So much in this short volume.I read this book every year, and every year I take something new from it. There's SO much in this short book. It's FILLED with truth about life, art, and life & art. Rating:  - David DramametThrough studying David Mamet's theories, I came to realise that a character can be understood not only through what they do, but also through what they say. My style has started to incorporate Mamet's technique of having characters talk, often to each other, as well as to express themselves through physical acts like gestures and walking. The education in this book has convinced me to abandon my earlier style, where characters have wordless internal monologues while not moving for a play's 2 or 3 ... Read More Rating: - A contemporary poetic.This book is a great essay about dramaturgy and politics that evolves some philosophical and psychological theories. Rating: - My Copy Is Torn To Shreds!I bought this book when it first came out in hardcover. It was about triple the price that it is now on Amazon, and many people I knew thought I was insane to buy such a small book for a high price. But to me -- it was all too worth it. David Mamet is all at once a very clear writer and a very mysterious writer. Critics of this particular book mainly see fault in its "seeming" lack of clarity -- Mamet has the intellect of an academic but does not feel that he should write like ... Read More Rating:  - fundamentalist brainstormThis reads like a weekend brainstorm into the dictaphone, or party-chatter with metropolitan friends. First glance - you've got the large font, wide-margins and generous line-spacing to pad these notes out into a book. Then you notice that nearly every paragraph includes several parenthetical thoughts (like I just had another way-outer to squeeze in here, okay?), plus quoted after-thoughts (sorry, couldn't find "the right words" just then, you know?) - and foreign phrases swept in from every part of ... Read More |
