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alex_ellermann 's review for:
Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama
by David Mamet
When I was an idealistic young English major, I went to my academic advisor and told him that I I'd lost interest in exploring professors' "isms." I didn't care about a given author's ideas about the society or politics of his or her day: if I wanted sociopolitical tracts, I'd read sociopolitical tracts. I wanted a class that'd teach me how to get under the hood of the novels, poems, plays, and films that moved me. I wanted not just to bask in their beauty, but figure out what made them go.
I wound up in an honors English course in which we undertook a feminist explication of "The Waste Land."
What I was looking for, years before it was published, was "Three Uses of the Knife." In it, writer/director David Mamet breaks down the elements of the three-act structure and shows how it resonates in the deepest chambers of the human psyche. Yes, he spends a fair amount of time rambling about other subjects (and displaying a degree of elitism that'd make even the most pretentious undergraduate blanch). Nevertheless, the time he spends under the hood is invaluable. His insights, combined with his extraordinary writing style, make "Three Uses of the Knife" required reading for anyone who wants to learn how the stories we love actually work.
Recommended for: You.
I wound up in an honors English course in which we undertook a feminist explication of "The Waste Land."
What I was looking for, years before it was published, was "Three Uses of the Knife." In it, writer/director David Mamet breaks down the elements of the three-act structure and shows how it resonates in the deepest chambers of the human psyche. Yes, he spends a fair amount of time rambling about other subjects (and displaying a degree of elitism that'd make even the most pretentious undergraduate blanch). Nevertheless, the time he spends under the hood is invaluable. His insights, combined with his extraordinary writing style, make "Three Uses of the Knife" required reading for anyone who wants to learn how the stories we love actually work.
Recommended for: You.