While we wait on the denouement of Eliot Spitzer's governorship, I can't recommend this David Mamet essay (that everyone else has been linking to) highly enough. In it, the great playwright, screenwriter and director details how he has left liberal groupthink behind.
Over at Hot Air, Captain Ed notes that the winding and occasionally wordy style of the essay is a bit surprising, especially for those of us who reflexively associate Mamet with staccato blasts of obscenity like the dialogue in "Glengarry Glen Ross." But in late 2006/early 2007, Mamet released two slim books. One was a ringing (and extraordinary) defense of his Jewish faith and his decision to practice it rigorously. The other was a meandering essay on Hollywood. Both books were brilliant. You'll have to take my word for this, but I've been meaning to write about them or at least recommend them for over a year. The book about Judaism, "The Wicked Son," particularly served notice that Mamet is happy being a brilliantly contrarian thinker.
One of the books' many surprises was how Mamet the prose stylist differed from the Mamet we know and love from the stage and screen. Mamet's thoughts were complex, and he often arrived at his conclusions obliquely, only after taking several seeming detours. The books' leisurely and meandering approach especially stood out since from Mamet, the reader expected a hurried bluntness. They were the most provocatively written books I read last year, and they raised a question - was their odd style the result of a laborious process or instead a more stream of conscious thing? Either way, the end result was brilliant. Some guys just got it, and it hardly comes as a newsflash that David Mamet is one of those guys.
I should also note that in his Hollywood book, Mamet spent several paragraphs on the movie "Galaxy Quest," referring to it (if I recall correctly) as a little piece of perfection. I had previously thought I was the only person who felt that way. Somehow I doubt a guy who was willing to publicly recognize "Galaxy Quest" for the small work of genius that it is was ever much of a groupthink kind of guy in the first place.
