"... in my experience, to express. For example: Middle class: 'What a nice dress.' Street: 'Hey, baby, any more at home like you?'... Iambic pentameter, five feet to the line. I was filming Heist with Gene Hackman; my wife, Rebecca Pidgeon; and Danny DeVito. Danny’s line to Gene, his rival, is, 'Are you fucking with me, are you fucking with me, or are you done fucking with me?'... I was concerned that [Danny] would (incorrectly) accentuate the word done at the end of the phrase, which would have branded him, sadly, with a merely academic understanding of actual American idiom. But I need not have worried, as he accentuated the final fucking and all was well. Per contra, Becca was raised in Edinburgh, and educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In the early days of our association she flatteringly strove to adopt my Chicagoan vocabulary. Our great friend, Shel Silverstein, corrected her: 'Becca, when you say motherfucker, it’s like someone is trying to fuck your mother.'"
August 12, 2025
"The speech of the American middle class is largely the attempt to impress, obfuscate, or placate. That of the streets is..."
Writes David Mamet in "Back When We Gave a Fuck" (Free Press).
I love the sudden appearance of Shel Silverstein and the use of the phrase "per contra." And I considered taking out the clarifying "[Danny]" and putting back the "he" — wasn't it obvious that Mamet meant Danny and not Gene" — because I wanted to preserve the number of syllables. I didn't want to intrude on Mamet's rhythm. I even asked Grok to analyze the text and tell me to what extent it approached iambic pentameter. Was "per contra" chosen for the meter or because boring people begin sentences with "By contrast"/"Conversely"/"On the other hand"? Is Shel Silverstein "Our great friend, Shel Silverstein" for the meter or because Mamet is the sort of person who wants you to know he was especially close to that celebrity he's name-dropping.
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23 comments:
Is Shel Silverstein "Our great friend, Shel Silverstein" ??
Obviously Added.. in an attempt at authenticity
Our great friend, Shel Silverstein. He knows where the motherfucking sidewalk ends.
Is Shel Silverstein so famous that Mamet needs to name-drop him? In a paragraph about directing Gene Hackman and Danny DeVito?
I think his point was that Silverstein was a good enough friend that nobody took offense.
How dumb I am: I think I just broke Wolfram Alpha asking how many iambs to a metrical foot…
a fuck = two shits
mother raper < father stabber < father raper (per arlo scale)
DISTA and DAMNU, two words memorized for high school english class exams. One is names of metrical feet, the other is morse code for it. First you have to figure out which is which. DISTA seems to be metrical feet, dactyl, iambic, spondee, trochee and anapest. So the other must be the morse code
long short short
short long
long long
long short
short short long
long long sounds right for spondee. I can't find it but I think Pope remarked on the spondee as having an effect like a snake crawling across the line.
Canada uses imperial feet
The mother of all fucks.
Canada uses imperial feet and they don't seem to mind the kissing.
Easiest way to remember trochees (inverse of iambs) is that every word in TEEN-age MU-tant NIN-ja TUR-tles is a trochee (which, like Turtles, starts with T).
Since there's four words in that line you get trochaic tetrameter. If you're of a certain age you might also remember another famous two lines of trochaic tetrameter:
HOLD the PICK-le HOLD the LET-tuce // SPEC-ial OR-ders DON'T up-SET us
Glad to be able to read it on archive, finally. Yesterday, they were just showing the same paywalled partial page.
I've also noticed what Mamet points out, that foul language has become a sort of impotent landmark of Trump's second term, for second and third-order politicians and celebrities alike, all using it to call attention to themselves, instead of being notable for the product of their professional efforts.
As for Zohran - it would be nice to think of the media crush of 'All-Zohran' as manifesting eventually into 'also-ran', but it's sure looking like he's going to become NYC's worst nightmare. What will success look like? My guess is, it won't be Trump's worst nightmare, but it might be that for a few million people.
Mamet ends his article with this:
When Zohran [Mamdsmi] says of Trump, “I am his worst nightmare,” an actual American response is not “Oh, yeah?” but “Oh, dear.”
Yup.
The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep"
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song
That, like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.
was an alexandriine, not spondee. Pope, Essay of Criticism
Confusing it with Coleridge
Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
It’s scansion day at Althouse.
“Iambic pentameter” deserves its own tag.
Mamet's conmen are just trying to "express"? Is that just "obfuscation" on his part? His tough guys may be pressuring and extorting to get what they want, rather than persuading, but isn't deception the whole art of the con? A lot of care is taken not to say what one means and not to seem more clever than the mark. "Street" talk probably is more poetic than "middle class" speech though, just as it's more poetic than legalese.
"My buddy, Shel" would've worked just as well.
Good Grief. Mamet grew up in a middle class household on Chicago's north side. His father was a lawyer. He went to an expensive Private HS and an expensive private college in Vermont. He's spent his life writing plays, books, and working as an actor, director, and film maker.
But he's a tough-guy. Streetwise. Back off motherfucker - or I'll knife you! He gives the middle class what the middle class wants to think of as "Tough, honest dialogue" with plenty of swear words of course.
He's the dark and gritty Damon Runyun. Popular - but fake.
To be from Chicago is to pretend to be a tough guy. It's the Chicago way. I think we had a president like that once. No, it wasn't Abraham Lincoln.
Grok is extremely unreliable for the very reasons (poetic, linguistically playful) that you like. David Mamet's a prejudiced troll. The upper-class version of a Proud Boy, only he never risked his life serving, though he demanded throughout his career that 'milk fed rural boys' risk their lives for his geopolitical preferences.
Reality still exists.
Mamet was a tough guy on the Bill Maher show, I kind of liked it.
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