David Mamet Gives Me Pause

I listened to a WTF podcast episode this morning in which Marc Maron's guest was award-winning playwright, film director, screenwriter, and novelist David Mamet.

I haven't seen or heard much of Mamet himself over the years. But based on what I've seen of his films and plays and a smattering of him in the media, I expected him to be less cordial and talkative than he was with Maron. On that podcast, he wasn't the intensely terse man of his fictional creations but an outspoken, almost garrulous man of strong opinions.

And one of his opinions is that a play or film is worth nothing if it doesn't "entertain" the audience. It can be filled with lofty ideas, but if it doesn't entertain the audience, it's just a bunch of pretentious crap.

He cited the example of poetry in the New Yorker that wannabe intellectuals praise. He says when he asks them to recite a line or two from some poem they say they liked, they can't. He takes this to mean they want to like it because they think they're supposed to, and they pretend to like it because they believe it will make them appear or actually become smarter and more cultured than they are. But they don't really like it because it isn't any good and doesn't entertain the reader enough to like and remember it well enough to recite it the way, say, a great Shakespeare sonnet does.

As I listened to this, I thought of the kinds of books, articles, and blogposts I want to write and podcasts I want to produce about subjects such as free will, Christian counter-apologetics, integral Buddhist stoicism, integral health, and so forth, and I wonder how entertaining I can make any of it. And if I can't make it entertaining, who's going to read or listen to it? And why would they? To foolishly put on airs of effete intellectualism and learnedness? I lack the academic bonafides to lure paying customers to my work even for that empty purpose.

Yet, I feel compelled to produce written works and podcasts that offer the best I can concerning the subjects and issues that fascinate me come what may. And so I shall.