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

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.

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   January 28, 2001
B. Bronczyk (Harleysville, PA USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

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.


An artistic credo well worth reading   January 31, 2003
Bukkene Bruse (Iowa)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

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.


With a diamond stylus...   September 28, 2000
5 out of 7 found this review helpful

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.


Best self-help book I've ever read   October 16, 2000
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

This brilliant, inspiring, and occasionally hilarious tract is Ur-Mamet. He's a pleasure to read. I picked it up because I was in the mood for some vigorous polemic--but it never occurred to me that I would find myself examining my self, my beliefs, my goals, and what it means to tell the truth. I read it twice in one night, and again the next day. A corker!