David Mamet -- Conservative Playwright

The road to self-discovery -- what a trip!

The Secret Knowledge
By David Mamet
Sentinel, 241 pages, $27.95

Enter Stage Right

In a celebrated 2008 essay for the Village Voice, David Mamet made the startling announcement that he was "no longer a brain-dead liberal." I think it only fair to mention here that I rejoiced.

Mr. Mamet is a terrific playwright, maybe even a great one ("American Buffalo," "Glengarry Glen Ross") and a screenwriter of the first rank ("The Verdict," "The Untouchables"). That a writer of such talent and stature had become a conservative seemed to me to promise some relief from the soporific political conformity of the American arts.

So I rejoiced—and I also sympathized. Breaking free of leftism while working in show business is like escaping from "The Matrix" only to find oneself in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

You wake to a risky but bracing new reality of individual liberty, limited government and free markets and are instantly beset by zombified statist dreamers determined either to make you rejoin their ranks or to destroy you. Mr. Mamet reports that a certain prominent left-leaning newspaper actually panned his first openly conservative play not once but twice for good measure. (Libertarian humorist Greg Gutfeld has introduced a "Mamet Attack Clock" on his late-night cable show to measure just how fast critics will now downgrade their opinions of the playwright's work.)

Under such circumstances, it is natural that Mr. Mamet would develop the urge to cry out, like Kevin McCarthy in the famous last scene of "Body Snatchers": "Listen to me! Please listen!" From that urge, no doubt, arises Mr. Mamet's new work of nonfiction, "The Secret Knowledge." It is his attempt to explain and disseminate the thinking behind his conversion to the right.

"Liberalism is a religion," he writes. "It affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost. Central to this religion is the assertion that evil does not exist, all conflict being attributed to a lack of understanding between the opposed. Well and good, but this does not accord with the experience of anyone."

There are inherent difficulties with a predominantly creative writer taking on what is effectively a work of political science. Those who are familiar with Mr. Mamet's previous nonfiction books — which are primarily about the theater and Hollywood — may rightly approach with caution. In trenchant works such as "On Directing Film" (1992), "True and False" (1999), and last year's brief handbook, "Theatre" (2010), Mr. Mamet often makes blunt, startling, dogmatic assertions that do not necessarily hold water as universal truths.

This mode of argument, though, is standard operating procedure among artists of all kinds when pronouncing on their respective crafts. Their manifestoes and declarations are understood not as axioms but as personal attempts to fashion an artistic response to the controversies of the age.

When, for instance, in "True and False," Mr. Mamet says that an actor can't explore the inner life of his character because "there is no character. There are only lines upon a page," the claim does not render Method acting obsolete. It is just Mr. Mamet insisting on the primacy of the text and spelling out the theoretical underpinnings of the deadpan, staccato, rough and hilarious style of dialogue known as Mamet-speak. It is Mamet creating Mamet.

But that explanation won't wash in politics. The blessings of liberty are not the stylistic and artistic preferences of an age. Either human life is ennobled by the dangers and rewards of freedom or we are better off when governments baby-proof reality and shepherd us to the good. It is one way or the other, and history and reason must be brought to bear in order to determine which.

This means that Mr. Mamet the political theorist must essentially reiterate the work of those more expert than he: Thomas Sowell, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and other architects of modern conservative thought.

Since these brilliant men are frequently ignored or underrated by mainstream critics, it is no bad thing to have a writer as concise and engrossing as Mr. Mamet offer us a sort of digest of their most salient observations on the depredations of the ruling class. And in fact, "The Secret Knowledge," written in Mr. Mamet's tough and funny style, is entertainingly informative.

But the book only really becomes indispensable when it is personal and specific to Mr. Mamet's experience. Take, for instance, this delightful exchange between the playwright and an ideologue in a class he was teaching, who feels that as many plays as possible should strive to demonstrate the humanity of homosexuals.

"Are gay people people too?" I asked the student, and he said that of course they were. "Are they aware of that fact?" I asked him. And he responded similarly. "Then why," I asked, "as they are aware of the fact, would they find its repetition on stage entertaining?"

"Ah, but," he said, "the straight people should see it."

"Ah, but," I said, "the straight people don't care. They may reward themselves for the ability to be bored by a play with a Good Message, but they, just like the gay people, come to the theater to be entertained. Your enlightenment is insufficient to capture the audience's attention for two hours."

This one piece of advice alone, if heeded, could revolutionize both Broadway and Hollywood for the good, and the reader might wish that there were more such wisdom in this book. "Theatre" is packed with such stuff and will, I think, do far more to advance both conservatism and show business.

That said, "The Secret Knowledge" remains a sharp-tongued and heartfelt primer on modern American conservatism. And for those who have already read Thomas Sowell and Friedrich Hayek and the rest, it might make an amusingly irritating present for a liberal friend.