David Mamet Gets Wicked Mad
From Jewlarious, hat tip to Yo,Yenta!
David Mamet’s new book, The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred and the Jews (Shocken/Nextbook), is out to kick your right in the complacency. The playright has been pondering the source of all this Jewish guilt for some time, and believes that it is a result of an internalized anti-Semitism (hear that, Mom?)
Although on general principles I think the anti-Semitism card is way overused, I have to say, Mamet’s usual over-the-top P.O.’ed style, makes me consider the possibility that this may be a very interesting book. It also sounds like he’s got a rather different take than the usual: he doesn’t go the usual “Israel and the Holocaust as our new religion” route (at least, not in this interview)
“To the wicked son, who asks ‘ What does all this mean to you?’; to the Jews who, in the ’70s envied the Black Power Movement; who, in the ’90s, envied the Palestinians; who weep at “Exodus” but jeer at the Israel Defense Forces; who nod when Tevye praises tradition but fidget through the Seder; who might take your curiosity to a dogfight, or an opium den, but find ludicrous the notion of a visit to the synagogue; whose favorite Jew is Anne Frank and whose second-favorite does not exist; who are humble in their desire to learn about Kwanzaa and proud of their ignorance of Tu B’Shvat; who bow their head reverently at a baptism and have never attended a bris. To you, who find your religion and race repulsive, your ignorance of your history a satisfaction, here is a book from your brother.”
[…] “The point of my book is that the disaffected person may consider himself the victim of too much Judaism, but someone who makes that confession has too little Judaism.” Mamet writes, “‘Jewish Guilt’ is not a side effect of being Jewish, but of being insufficiently Jewish. Buddhism will not cure it, self-help will not cure it, good works will not cure it, A course in miracles will not cure it — all of these, ranging from religion to nostrum, cannot eradicate the lapsed Jew’s sense of being lost. For he is lost.”
I just mentioned this in one of my later posts about Public Enemy and Israel: http://www.nearista.com/nearista/2006/11/cant_truss_it.html
Enjoy!
Mamet writes:
“To the wicked son, who asks ‘ What does all this mean to you?’; to the Jews who, in the ’70s envied the Black Power Movement; who, in the ’90s, envied the Palestinians; who weep at “Exodus†but jeer at the Israel Defense Forces; who nod when Tevye praises tradition but fidget through the Seder; who might take your curiosity to a dogfight, or an opium den, but find ludicrous the notion of a visit to the synagogue; whose favorite Jew is Anne Frank and whose second-favorite does not exist; who are humble in their desire to learn about Kwanzaa and proud of their ignorance of Tu B’Shvat; who bow their head reverently at a baptism and have never attended a bris. To you, who find your religion and race repulsive, your ignorance of your history a satisfaction, here is a book from your brother.â€
And what about the Jews who don’t know the difference between “kiddush” and “kaddish” but like to remind other Jews how abhorrently ignorant they are?
I now quote from Mamet’s own book “Some Freaks” (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 7-8.:
“There was no art in the Ashkenazi homes. And, as Jews, there were no religious trappings beyond, perhaps, a Kaddish cup or a menorah.”
Isn’t a “kaddish cup” something men wear at full-contact funerals?
-Perchik-
A crappy poem by Sholom
Fuck the father the mother the daughter the son
I’m going to Kiev and I’m taking my gun
Tradition
A rendition
Of servile submission
It’s a social condition
Based in superstition
I don’t ask for permission
To mount opposition
rock on, sholom. this book sounds awful. mamet is ignorant on this subject, and out of his depth.
I’m not sure a more profoundly obnoxious, arrogant, self-righteous scumbag has ever walked the Earth than David Mamet. He is the prototypical Cult Jew, who doesn’t give a flying fuck about Judaism for his first 30 or 40 or 50 years, but whose first assignment once he signs up is to join the Saudi Arabian-style religious police, and make sure no one else has the opportunity to make the same choices he so freely exercised over the course of his life. Then again, his creepiness isn’t all that much of a surprise, given the fact that his writing has never consisted of anything but the most vulgar meretritious hackwork; his writing has all the grace and subtlety of an axe handle across the back of the neck.
As I was reading the short post from his interview, I was wondering if Mamet were becoming as much an anti-semite, as he is a misogynst…
Interesting. Mamet’s “Homicide” is about a Jewish detective who investigates whether the killing of an elderly former Jewish underground fighter by a black man was motivated by anti-Semitism.
While I think that Mamet should have focused on The Son Who Does Not Know How to Ask — because I think ignorance is more often the root of Jewish self-rejection than wickedness — he is right on about Jews who will do anything to get a spiritual “fix” but learn about Judaism.
Mamet is attacking the way Jews have internalized anti-Jewish cultural images, manifesting in a profound embarrassment about being Jewish. When I began my quest to learn more about Jewish tradition I faced unending hostility from my assimilated, anti-religious family. Why? Because they felt threatened by what I was doing. My forays into religious practice flew in the face of their delusion that as white Jews in America they were just like “everybody else” (that is, just like white Protestants). Any reminder of difference sent them into spasms of derision. This reaction was especially launched at the Orthodox, but even Reform Jews who celebrated Hanukkah set them to sneering. The venom behind such a response indicates that there’s more to this than a philosophical disagreement.
By the way, some of you sound a tad defensive. In what way is Mamet acting like “Saudi Arabian-style religious police” if he states a point of view? He’s not telling us to don black hats and sheitels, he’s trying to wake Jewish people up to their self-hatred. You may disagree with him, but his frustration about Jewish ignorance doesn’t make him an anti-semite. If so, you’d have to include a lot of rabbis in that category…
Wow, the vituperous responses to this article makes we wonder whether Mamet hasn’t hit a raw nerve here – how about responding to the points he raises and not attack the man – or do his arguments cut too close to the bone?
You know, I really wonder if al those KKK arguments against the racial inferiority of niggers, Jews, and other mud races haven’t just hit a bone. After all, the seething hatred for the virulent bigotry and racist stupidity of these half-human white trash couldn’t possibly reflect a revulsion against their appalling stupidity, but must reflect some hidden insecurity about the underlying power of their arguments. So, let’s start having an in-depth discussion about the respective cranial size of the Aryan and Negroid cranium, and other arguments of essential importance to the “arguments†of twisted, bigoted sacks of shit like the Klan . . . or Cult Jews like Mamet.
As usual, David Smith, BRAVO.
In fact, David Smith, those “half-human white trash” people are fully human. Sometimes people do and say things we don’t like. By dehumanizing them and sinking to the level of their rhetoric you sound just like them. Be careful when you hate that you don’t become the thing you hate.
By the way, being sarcastic and using words like “scumbag” and phrases like “twisted, bigoted sacks of shit” is no way to make an argument.
calm down ya’ll. i think you will all find something to enjoy about this book. i sat down with it recently in city lights books, and damn if i didn’t sit there and read the whole book. mamet is FIERCE. i was so thrilled he’d written this book. he says things most people are terrified to say but that many of us think.
“mamet is FIERCE”
He’s your angry, authoritarian daddy and he’s telling you that if you want to be cured, you’ve got to take some bad tasting medicine.
What is sad Sarah that you find so much of the book appealing. His anti-gentile statements reveal a mind full of hate and bigotry. His poisonous malignng and scapegoating of non-Jews for the purpose of keeping Jews within the fold is oddly not commented on by any of the numerous reviews the book has received. In the very beginning of the book Mamet repeatedly admonishes each Jew that “the world hates you.” And he disdains as unworthy any attempt on his part to employ reason and logic to make his point. This devious ranting of hostility toward “the world” is nothing more than scapegoating, much like another book of its kind, Mein Kampf.