The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture

by David Mamet

Overview

David Mamet has been a controversial, defining force in nearly every creative endeavor-now he turns his attention to politics.

In recent years, David Mamet realized that the so-called mainstream media outlets he relied on were irredeemably biased, peddling a hypocritical and deeply flawed worldview.

In 2008 Mamet wrote a hugely controversial op-ed for the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'", in which he methodically attacked liberal beliefs, eviscerating them as efficiently as he did Method acting in his bestselling book True and False.

Now Mamet employs his trademark intellectual force and vigor to take on all the key political issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming. The legendary playwright, author, director, and filmmaker pulls no punches in his art or in his politics. And as a former liberal who woke up, Mamet will win over an entirely new audience of others who have grown irate over America's current direction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595230973
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/28/2012
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Mamet 's Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1984. He is also the author of Writing in Restaurants and On Directing Film, both available from Penguin.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 The Political Impulse 1

2 The American Reality 8

3 Culture, School Shootings, the Audience, and the Elevator 11

4 Alcatraz 21

5 Lost Horizon 29

6 The Music Man 34

7 Choice 38

8 The Red Sea 50

9 Chicago 53

10 Milton Friedman Explained 58

11 What Is "Diversity"? 62

12 The Monty Hall Problem and the Contractor

13 Maxwell Street 71

14 R100 74

15 The Intelligent Person's Guide to Socialism and Anti-Semitism 80

16 The Victim 84

17 Puritans 88

18 The Noble Savage 91

19 Adventure Slumming 96

20 Cabinet Spiritualism and the Car Czar 100

21 Rumpelstiltskin 104

22 My Father, Al Sharpton, and the Designated Criminal 111

23 Greed 116

24 Arrested Development 123

25 Oakton Manor and Camp Kawaga 129

26 Feminism 134

27 The Ashkenazis 146

28 Some Personal History 156

29 The Family 164

30 Naturally Evolved Institutions 167

31 Breatharian 172

32 The Street Sweeper and the Surgeon, or Marxism Examined 177

33 Self-Evident Truth 190

34 Hope and Change 196

35 The Small Refrigerator 202

36 Bumper Stickers 206

37 Late Revelations 210

38 Who Does One Think He Is? 216

39 The Secret Knowledge 221

Acknowledgments 225

Bibliography 227

Index 233

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A Manichean analysis from a strident new voice from the Right—-for liberals, something intended to ignite antagonism; for the like-minded, a buttress against the opposition." —-Kirkus

Editorial Reviews

American playwright and filmmaker Mamet is a wide-ranging author (including children's stories, a volume of verse, and even a graphic novel), but he excels at the coolly acerbic essay, which best shows off his contrarian streak. This set of short, informal essays elaborate on his recent political awakening from "brain-dead" liberalism, a foray into what used to be called the culture wars. It feels a couple of decades tardy and, despite its author's characteristically terse yet pensive prose, too at-the-knee of the usual neoconservative icons, including Hayek. The title refers to the privileged patterns of initiation into the worldview of the "Liberal Left" Mamet ridicules, often by analogy to adolescent naïveté. But he replaces one set of talking points with another: the familiar argot about free markets, inveighing against any opposition to Israel as anti-Semitism, and the "liberal" attempt to bankrupt us all. Mamet still wields the colorful anecdote and unexpected analogy, and his narrative holds most interest when straying back to his turf on movie sets and theater stages. But as an avenging apostate of liberalism, Mamet offers nothing new. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"A Manichean analysis from a strident new voice from the Right---for liberals, something intended to ignite antagonism; for the like-minded, a buttress against the opposition." ---Kirkus

From the Publisher

Expanding upon a theme originally presented in a 2008 VILLAGE VOICE editorial, playwright, screenwriter, and film director David Mamet offers a series of linked essays in support of private enterprise, rugged individualism, and a highly limited governmental role. Mamet’s arguments are cogent, simple, and strong, but Johnny Heller’s gritty tone and monotonous rhythm do not assist the listener in comprehending the author’s arguments. Government, as argued, may be the ultimate bureaucracy, and those left of center may indeed follow a uniform herd mentality. But this work would have been far more compelling with a less repetitive, more finely nuanced—in fact, more varied—audio performance. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2011 - AudioFile

A Pulitzer Prize–winning showman and "reformed Liberal" rants about the precarious state of the nation.

In 39 short essays, playwright, screenwriter and director Mamet (Theatre, 2010) discusses many of his least-favorite things, including taxes, sloth, foreign aid, the notion of global warming, big government, taxes, the present Democratic administration, liberals, taxes and "social justice" (quotes his).Did we mention taxes? With the mood of serious discussion, the author weights this jeremiad with stilted argot and copious footnotes that are simply more of the same arguments in reduced typeface. But Mamet is sharper than the conventional scold, and, like his most memorable stage characters, he offers a mashup of notions, some commendable, supported by reference to very selective history. Unabashed in making blanket, unfounded assertions, the gifted dramatist erects nincompoop straw men easily demolished with clever, impassioned rhetoric. Detection of undeniable flaws in liberal logic, rightly derided, gives way to ad hominemargument,post hocreasoning and faulty classification—it's disputation, not evidence. In a monolithic, elitist Left—one surely not as cohesive and close-minded as Mamet depicts, one more liable to agree with him on, say, the benefits of capitalism (albeit, perhaps, with more legal safeguards—he sees hypocrisy. Surely, community values and the unfettered marketplace of ideas are important to liberal and conservative alike. Sweetened with personal history, a couple good jokes and some pointed insights, Mamet's polemic yields no secret and scant knowledge. He does, nevertheless, raise the volume with incontestable dramatic talent.

A Manichean analysis from a strident new voice from the Right—for liberals, something intended to ignite antagonism; for the like-minded, a buttress against the opposition.

Kirkus Reviews