Mamet arrives at Planet Reality
The article by David Mamet in which he reveals how he stopped being a brain dead liberal or leftie when he was finally mugged by reality contains the (for me) arresting observation:
And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.Leaving aside the ability to write plays of international stature, along with a view of human nature that for me is too black (since I think people are capable of both good and evil), Mamet identifies one of the multitudinous and self-evident contradictions which prompted me to embark on my own 25-year headlong flight from Planet Kafka. Now there’s the stuff of drama…