David Mamet

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 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.… (lisätietoja)

This is the first David Mamet novel that I've read. Chicago tells a 1920s story about gun-running, the Italian South-side Outfit, the Irish North-siders, a flower-shop girl, a black madame, a singer passing in the speaks, and two Chicago Tribune reporters still dealing with the Great War while happily avoiding the Volstead Act's intended consequences.

The main issue here is that we are more than 100 pages in until the actual plot of the novel begins to truly unfold. Neither the characters nor the dialogue are enough to really compel the reader forward to that point--unless one is just interested in the scene. As a person who loves history and Chicago the city, I had no major issues doing that, but I imagine others could be annoyed.

Also, this is neither a thriller nor a true mystery (the solution isn't strictly possible until the end, when the protagonist knows and the narration simply reveals it as a fait accompli). As such, it's hard to figure the genre of this novel and that may be disappointing some of the readers who came expecting X and ended up with Y.

But, if you like 1920s Chicago, David Mamet style conversations, and a wide cast of Chicago's demi-monde, then you will enjoy (though probably not overly so) this book.… (lisätietoja)