From an interview in The New York Times.
Is reading great prose one of your chiefest joys?
Do you credit any ideas of a lox?
Do you infuse your recycling decisions with considerations irrelevant to the process of recycling?
January 1, 2024
"If it were badly written how could it be a great book?" — said David Mamet, answering the question "Can a great book be badly written?"
"Perhaps if it contained Great Ideas? According to whom? The writer? Who died and left him boss? In the estimation of the reader? If I am he, nope, for why should I credit any ideas of a lox who didn’t realize he couldn’t write? Reading great prose is one of my chiefest joys. When I find myself rewriting the book I’m reading, I not only throw it away, I do not recycle it."
From an interview in The New York Times.
From an interview in The New York Times.
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69 comments:
If "chiefest" is a real word, it shouldn't be.
Got to say, I really dislike Mamet’s latest book. It is a slog; not a lox.
And I really liked his last two books.
Is reading great prose is one of your chiefest joys?
Yes.
Do you credit any ideas of a lox?
Yes. Currently, Donald Trump.
Do you infuse your recycling decisions with considerations irrelevant to the process of recycling?
Yes. Recycling is a NewAge scam and I don't fuck with NewAge scams.
Crediting the ideas of a lox sounds fishy to me. That's not my bag-el, man.
Thomas De Quincey Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Thomas Carlyle Sartor Resartus
Coleridge any prose (he wrote op eds for more than a decade, but try Biographia Literaria or The Friend)
all tend to be online now in Gutenberg but hard copy is nicer.
The problem is that many books (and movies, etc.) are pushed by corporations or political partisans and receive a flood of 'independent' critical reviews that are neither independent nor critical. They then enter the 'great books' canon through overwhelming force and trickery, and aren't critically challenged for a generation or two. Then they fade away.
I'm thinking of all sorts of 1950-1960s countercultural and hippie stuff (e.g., Even Cowgirls Get the Blues). I'm thinking of...gag...Ernest Hemingway...where all the 'good stuff' was implied rather than written...
1. No.
2. If the ideas are good enough, sure!
3. No. I recycle because my wife wishes that it be done. No other reason reason.
Tom wolfes last was dissapointing it was a long form essay
Is reading great prose is one of your chiefest joys?
Gotta admit. It's better than reading trash.
Do you credit any ideas of a lox? Nope
Do you infuse your recycling decisions with considerations irrelevant to the process of recycling? Again. Nope.
Yes. Next question.
I think David Mamet's a terrible writer, a failed wannabe Saul Bellow. But I don't throw away bad books. Bad books are useful in their failures.
Prose is only one aspect of the written word. One can also enlightened by a brilliant idea or terrific plot.
Was Tom Clancy a great writer? Not particularly. I always thought his characters were too wooden. That does not mean that the stories he told through his writing were not engrossing.
You can have a song with a great melody, great playing, and poor lyrics and it still can be a great song. Cream’s “Badge” comes to mind.
I had a professor once that said, your research paper is 1/3 of your grade. This is not high school. You are supposed to know how to write. I will not read, and will grade with a "F" any paper that has even one misspelling or grammatical error.
I am having difficulty with “lox”.
If lox is a salmon, I’m willing to engage its ideas wholeheartedly. If any fish has ideas is remarkable enough, let alone after being filleted. However, Mamet might be playing with an absurd neologism from about twenty years back, loxism, Jewish anti-white racism. If that’s the case, I think I agree with him. I think.
I’ve no trouble with “chiefest”. Though in modern American English, chief is its own superlative, there are archaic examples of what we might call super-superlatives like chiefest. Salting otherwise bland and sleepy prose, e.g. nearly everything published in the New York Times, with a bit of savory archaism is good writing. Yea, verily. Is reading great prose one of my chiefest joys? Could be. I have a lot of them.
Don’t get me started on the subject of recycling.
You've got another typo.
I'm glad no one's counting how many mistakes I make in a day.
i neither know, nor care, who David Mamet is...
But i'm Pretty sure that he'd think that Starship Troopers was badly written; Which would explain a lot
Here's another book, that many consider great: The Lord of the Rings
and many that think so, would agree with the author, that the writing suffers from a very bad flaw:
It's Too Short
A fine lox, with a bagel, is one of life’s great joys.
@Will Cate, you should have said "yes."
That your wife wants it is a consideration irrelevant to the process of recycling.
By "considerations irrelevant to the process of recycling," I mean things that wouldn't matter in setting the policy for recycling, such as the quality of the substance to be recycled or the likelihood that this material is actually recycled or whether it's dirty might therefore be rejected, along with everything else around it.
Irrelevant considerations are things like whether the writing on the paper is good and how it makes you feel and whether you'll go to hell.
Is reading great prose is one of your chiefest joys?
I need some substance in what I read, either facts, insights or ideas. Otherwise the prose is just froth. I also distrust authors, or people in generally, who are more style over substance.
The best prose for me is one that does not point attention to itself in anyway. I expect good prose with fiction, but will tolerate some clumsy prose in non fiction if I find the subject matter interesting, such as Mark Kulansky who has written some very interesting books about the history of various commodities, but is not a good writer.
According to ChatGPT "lox" is a nonce word in this passage, like "pompetus of love" in that song, the Joker, which apparently means dullard. I guess if we take his meaning without too much effort, it's English.
I like "chiefest" and don't care if it's a word or not, but spellcheck dint choke on it. ChatGPT says that it's archaic.
"That your wife wants it is a consideration irrelevant..."
Yes, correct -- I misread that first time around. Guess that was my first mistake.
Somehow, my comment got locked out, again.
"The best prose for me is one that does not point attention to itself in anyway."
This is a rule for a certain style of writing. If you write in this manner, you will certainly have a wider readership. I don't buy it though. I just read Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and the prose in that novel called attention to itself on every page, and I loved it. Not to mention that suddenly a lot of The Big Lebowski made sense (duh!).
”…Starship Troopers was badly written.”
The novella or the movie?
Stick said...
I had a professor once that said, your research paper is 1/3 of your grade. This is not high school. You are supposed to know how to write. I will not read, and will grade with a "F" any paper that has even one misspelling or grammatical error.
Stick? you DO Realize, don't you? that IF a professor even said that now.. They'd be terminated?
Welcome to 2024.. Please TRY to keep up
"If it were badly written how could it be a great book?"
Mamet dismisses possible reasons too easily, showing that good writers can get away with shallow reasoning--better than ordinary mortals, anyway.
Even without getting into what the meaning of bad is, lots of great books are badly written. I nominate the Critique of Pure Reason.
Rhhardin. Sartor Resartus Indeed! Well played.
I don't know if Dreiser is a bad writer, but he's definitely a clumsy one. I think Sister Carrie is the worst written great novel...People who can read in Russian say that Dostoevsky isn't especially graceful in his handling of the Russian language....Fitzgerald's novels aren't all that great, but his handling of the language is so luminous and shimmering that you don't notice their flaws.....In terms of narrative drive and flow a book like Shogun is up there with Lord of the Rings. I think people give more weight to luminous language than a compelling narrative....If you read Dickens in two hours swatches like they used to in Victorian times, you can appreciate the majesty of his language.
I've read a couple of Mamet's books. He seems to like to throw out opinions without necessarily backing them up. I think he would be a difficult dinner guest.
Gibbon for great prose. Begins hard becomes mesmerizing.
A great book must have an unforgettable style, an unforgettable rhythm. A book is made of language, bad prose can never yield a great book. The best words in the right order…..
I just read Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and the prose in that novel called attention to itself on every page, and I loved it
OK, I like Chandler a lot and he's perhaps an exception to my rule. Though you could argue that the prose is pointing attention to the hard boiled mindset of the narrator and not to itself.
Also, the prose of any non contemporary writer is going to point some attention to itself.
Dickens had it all, compelling characters, interesting incidents, important themes, and great stories, and was a brilliant prose stylist. The real issue with his kind of style is that it’s safe advice to a young writer to avoid it, since you can’t teach genius. And hack writers have their place, but nobody wants to read them straining to be what they are not.
boatbuilder: "He seems to like to throw out opinions without necessarily backing them up. I think he would be a difficult dinner guest."
It takes brass balls to invite Mamet to dinner! And whatever you do, don't try to serve coffee after dinner to those whom he has defeated in oral argument.
Good grief. I see this as hubris.
"Who died and left him boss?"
Not him.
In the estimation of the reader? If I am he, nope, for why should I credit any ideas of a lox who didn’t realize he couldn’t write?"
Choosing form over content? Beautiful prose devoid of meaning is empty, useless vanity.
"Reading great prose is one of my chiefest joys."
How nice for him. Failure to discern a good idea because it isn't wrapped in a pretty package is dismissive, and while loving the pretty wrapping is pleasurable, it's not the main thing.
Yes, reading is a great joy, and I should do it more often. I hesitate to classify the bike I read as "great prose", though.
Just because the lox cannot write well Enough to please Mr. Mamet, it does not Mean his/her ideas are without merit. I connote imagine him (Mamet) slogging through mountains of scientific and engineering books, as I have, yet, there are thousands of good ideas there.
Everything eventually gets recycled, in some form, no matter what our disposal decision.
"Irrelevant considerations are things like whether the writing on the paper is good and how it makes you feel and whether you'll go to hell."
I threw away som tin cans that in retrospect could have proved useful.
Is reading great prose one of your chiefest joys?
No. But I suppose it depends on the definition of good prose. Most of the fiction I read might be described as written in workmanlike prose that doesn't get in the way of the action or ideas. For technical articles, organization, accuracy, and clarity counts for a lot. What doesn't work well for me are long descriptive passages, which for some reason new writers often seem to confuse with good writing. Mark Twain at his best wrote very good prose IMHO, simple, surprising and effective word choices, and interesting thoughts. Thurber is also very good. Humor is hard to do, serious is easier. Serious is the Devil's bait to snare the writer.
Reading great prose is one of my very greatest pleasures, yes.
Tim in Veromont said: "I just read Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and the prose in that novel called attention to itself on every page, and I loved it" I saw the movie first, multiple times. And I thought it was great but with a very confusing ending that never felt quite right. Much later I read the book and loved it. But it is exactly like the movie, great but with a very confusing ending that never felt quite right. Turns out that the movie follows the book slavishly (a rare thing in Hollywood). Raymond Chandler could really write. So, my guess is his books are not going into the trash at the Mamet house.
Spelling and grammar Nazis suffer from a deep insecurity because they are faded to only understand the arbitrary and capricious laws of man and not the law of nature. People who will fix your grammar and spelling work for cheap. AI is taking care of spelling and it's getting closer and closer on grammar. If an AI can replace your job you can no longer pass the Turing test.
“Can a great book be badly written?”
It can if it’s badly written on purpose:
“Just exactly how blatant does the man have to be? He’s written one of the greatest textbooks on narrative fiction ever produced, with a truly magnificent set of examples of HOW NOT TO DO IT right there in the foreground, and constant explanations of how to do it right, with literary references to people and books that DID do it right, in the background…”
One of the interesting tensions in The Big Sleep was between the hard boiled detective and his sensitive literary side. I guess you could say that penetrating observation is a common feature of good detective work and good writing, so maybe it’s not inherently a tension.
I tend to read fiction quite fast, sometimes just skimming the text. There are a few authors, however, of the new-old variety (those that fall somewhere in that wide ditch between the ancients and the "steaming romances" of today's trash), whose prose catches me and which I read and re-read, slowly, savoring. ...just because something in it grabs my mind and says, "This flows like a rippling stream over river rocks, moving smoothly down a gentle slope, burbling, murmuring, ...and I want to sit beside that stream and listen....
And I cannot think of a word or phrase that I would change.
Jane Austen is one that comes to mind, as are Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, and Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides.
But that's just me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"Do you infuse your recycling decisions with considerations irrelevant to the process of recycling?"
Almost all of what we now call "recycling" is mostly irrelevant to the process of recycling. This is because almost everything that can profitably be recycled was already being recycled before the Left Fascists got hold of the idea.
California has a law requiring that beverage cans be made of aluminum. This law was passed in order to maintain the profitability of recyclers. Because without that law, the beverage industry would long since have shifted to making thinner, cheaper cans out of steel. As usual, California is such a large market that its moronic legislature can foist their idiocy on the rest of us. I suppose that's how the rest of the world feels about America.
“Do you infuse your recycling decisions with considerations irrelevant to the process of recycling?”
Yeah. I thought that was more poetic license than much else.
Unless “recycling” means donating the book. 🤔
Chiefest is perfectly cromulent, and reading good prose has been and remains much of my bliss.
Someone mentioned Kulansky (it's Kurlansky) and I agree that he's worth reading about everyday products but is not a great writer-- I found his "Paper" to be the most interesting (as a book person and archivist).
I'm impressed by the writing skills of many of the historians active today. McMeekin, Margaret MacMillan (currently reading The War That Ended Peace), Martyn Rady (The Habsburgs, and The Middle Kingdoms); Peter Green's books about ancient history, Tom Holland . . .
A list of some of my favorite authors--those I consider the best and/or have most influenced my own thinking--can be found on my profile.
Starship Troopers is a novel, not a novella, surely. And Heinlein was by no means a great prose stylist, but he was a great storyteller.
I prefer great stories to great writing. I like to read great writing sometimes, but when the story fails to keep my attention, it seems like a needlepoint sampler or something - a little thing produced to show off the maker's skills rather than to produce something useful or beautiful in itself.
Recycling? I separate the cans and bottles from the rest of the trash if the containers make it easy to do so, I suppose to preserve recycling optionality at the landfill; I don't think any actual recycling is taking place in my locale. But if the (smaller) recycling container in my kitchen is full and my wastebasket is not, and I'm busy or tired or entertaining, suddenly everything is trash. Does that count? That my recycling decisions are based on my activities and energy level and on convenience?
Is reading great prose one of your chiefest joys? Well, yeah, on those rare occasions when I can find it. The rest of the time I read anything that is interesting, informative, or entertaining in other ways.
The only way I can make sense of Mamet's recycling sentence is to assume that what he means by "recycling" is actually just reselling the book or placing it in one of those neighborhood lending boxes. Otherwise, it is impossible to imagine what environmental (or mental) damage he avoids by not letting Waste Management shred the pages with bad prose along with cardboard boxes and gift wrapping.
Mamet is so compressed. He says outrageous things that he expects you to recognize as true - recognize through your laughter. Lox is funnier than dead fish.
I don't believe Crichton was a great writer, but he had great ideas.
What is "bad" writing. Some mid-19th century writing seems "bad" to the modern reader as it flips around structure. I was just reading some excerpts from JS Mills' 'On Liberty'. Slow going as the sentence order is unfamiliar.
I had a similar experience reading F.J. Stimson. His early 20th century writings are easier but still have passages that require the reader to discipline their intellect and for the English major, regulation of emotions
"But no one, I think, has ever called attention to the enormous differences in living, in business, in political temper between the days (which practically lasted until the last century) when a citizen, a merchant, an employer of labor, or a laboring man, still more a corporation or association and lastly, a man even in his most intimate relations, the husband and the father, well knew the law as familiar law, a law with which he had grown up, and to which he had adapted his life, his marriage, the education of his children, his business career and his entrance into public life -- and these days of to-day, when all those doing business under a corporate firm primarily, but also those doing business at all; all owners of property, all employers of labor, all bankers or manufacturers or consumers; all citizens, in their gravest and their least actions, also must look into their newspapers every morning to make sure that the whole law of life has not been changed for them by a statute passed overnight; when not only no lawyer may maintain an office without the most recent day-by-day bulletins on legislation, but may not advise on the simplest proposition of marriage or divorce, of a wife's share in a husband's property, of her freedom of contract, without sending not only to his own State legislature, but for the most recent statute of any other State which may have a bearing on the situation."
--Popular Law-making: A Study of the Origin, History, and Present Tendencies of Law-making by Statute, Frederic J. Stimson (1910)
And yet, every part of that sentence has value. Oddly far more value that most academic writings of the last 50 years, which dissipate if you apply critical reading to them.
Fitzgerald's novels aren't all that great, but his handling of the language is so luminous and shimmering that you don't notice their flaws
I think Gatsby is both a great novel and exquisitely written, but I was pretty bored by his other novels, notwithstanding the fine prose. A great story and characters, or great ideas, can overcome less than great prose, but not so much the other way around. (Of course really terrible writing can make anything unreadable, but that's what editors are for.) Dreiser, as mentioned above, was not a great stylist, but his novels are still very readable.
References above to such writers as Michael Crichton, J.R.R.Tolkien and Robert Heinlein shows that some commenters here miss the point. When he refers to "great books," Mamet is not referring to popular entertainment that may be good or bad on the level of delivering entertainment. He is referring to "great" books, books that will live and be read around the world for decades and centuries as timeless classics as depictions of the human experience.
That said, there are books deemed as "great" that may arguably be said to be lacking in the quality of their prose. These are the books that will eventually fall from the canon of great books. Others will survive because they live on in translations that may be improvements on the original language, (e.g., Dostoyevsky has been said to be less than stellar in his native prose, and Nabokov famously hates Dostoyevsky's work). It takes decades or centuries to see which books will hold on to their status as "great," and which books will be forgotten or derided in time.
prose (written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure:)
A lot of 'great prose' seems to me excessively long and doesn't strike me as the way I've ever heard people speaking. Most comes across as nod worthy unless it's a period piece.
I'd rather things happen and got done than observe innermost angst. I've never gotten the anxiety part of angst and any dread was accompanied by "Crap I might die." so not all that placid.
Eloquence can be thrown in every once in a while but for a whole book it's heavy.
TLDR; I like what I like.
Is the converse also true?
Mamet had better hope not; otherwise the stupid idea he expresses here could wipe out a lot of the value that his writing might have.
Robert Cook:
He is referring to "great" books, books that will live and be read around the world for decades and centuries as timeless classics as depictions of the human experience.
If you don't think J.R.R.Tolkien falls into that category, you no doubt exclude many other authors who do as well.
---One of the interesting tensions in The Big Sleep was between the hard boiled detective and his sensitive literary side.
Like the stuff with the drinks in the greenhouse? That was Faulkner's contribution all the way!
This post is unfairly snarky. It was an interview; this is how he expressed himself off-the-cuff. I thought the words and phrases he used were interesting and colourful.
"Like the stuff with the drinks in the greenhouse? That was Faulkner's contribution all the way!"
LOL that's exactly what I was thinking of!
I recycle plastic only because my county charges me 50 cents for every big bag of household trash if I do. But I know it's useless to recycle plastic. I bury my cardboard and books I hate in the old still along with ripped out old lumber and drywall to eventually be taken away in a construction dumpster, and I give my aluminum to my handiman, who melts it down into intricate sculptures.
Food scraps go in the garden or the woods. What's the best way to attract deer? Shrimp shells. What vegetable does nobody want? Brussels sprouts. I just throw carrot ends and old apples and celery down by the back hill. Usually the dog gets to them first.
He just found a dead vulture, leading to an horrific wrestling match and a nagging question: do other vultures usually eat the dead vultures?
I only have one David Mamet book, and just for academic reasons. What a prejudiced ass.
Postman is a book that seems, word for word, like it should be bad, but it's good. Most of Norman Mailer's novels seem like they should be good, but they're terrible.
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