Revisiting a Debut at a Career's End: David Mamet's Lakeboat (1970/1980)

Abstract

Revisiting a Debut at a Career's EndDavid Mamet's Lakeboat (1970/1980) Matthew Sorrento On April 13, 2022, I received notice that ReFocus: The Films of David Mamet, a planned anthology in Edinburgh University Press's film studies series, had been cancelled. Co-editors Michelle E. Moore and Brian Brems decided they could no longer in good conscience go forward with the project after Mamet's April 2022 comments to Fox News. Mamet—who won the 1984 Pulitzer for Glengarry Glen Ross (1983)—had made claims about the previous presidential election being stolen and, even more bizarre, that teachers are "inclined" to be sexual groomers of children.1 While in the middle of writing a chapter on Mamet's less-regarded 1997 film, The Spanish Prisoner, for the collection, I could understand Moore and Brems's decision. This cancellation signals an end of extended scholarly commentary of Mamet as an artist, now that he has recently embraced polemical writings for profit. Mamet's right-wing conversion began with his less coherent 2008 piece for The Village Voice, entitled "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal,'" Here, he writes: 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.2 Having celebrated humanity under duress, Mamet now condemns such struggles. And with little interest in humanity, his art—including recent plays like Race (2009) and The Penitent (2017), as well as Phil Spector (2013), an HBO TV film that he wrote and directed and which may be his worst [End Page 225] effort onscreen yet—began to lose its way. In both The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (2011) and Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch (2022)—and during the latter's press tour, which included the Fox News appearance—Mamet continued with more loose-formed commentary and plenty of "unqualified declarations" (in the words of Christopher Hitchens).3 These books feature the kind of maxims and wide reference points that are present in Mamet's interviews and in his worthy nonfiction on art, such as On Directing Film (1991) and Three Uses of the Knife: on the Nature and Purpose of Drama (1998). However, Mamet's recent political books recycle factoids that attack 1970s counterculture, diversity, and "elected leaders on the coasts." It is a particularly sad outcome for the once-great writer, as he exploits his capacity for turn of phrase to support a right-wing agenda. Earlier in his career, Mamet listened to the voices around him, both literary and media-borne, to develop an ear for dialogue and a style of drama.4 While he is now concerned with financial hegemony, Mamet was previously in tune with the common worker, especially in his debut play, Lakeboat (1970/1980).5 Showing an enthusiasm for differing perspectives, Lakeboat comprises 28 brief scenes set aboard a Merchant Marine steel freighter on the Great Lakes. The play depicts reflections on work and livelihood, including a fireman whose sense of professionalism relies on keeping watch with inaction, as well as seaman Fred, who remains bitter about his alimony payments.6 Audience surrogate Dale Katzman is a young, optimistic college student working onboard for the summer, as the author did at that age.7 Each of Mamet's boatmen could star in their own realistic proletarian drama. These crew members echo working-class theater of the early twentieth century, which ranged from the progressive work of Clifford Odets to thoughtful entertainments like Elliott Lester's play, Two Seconds (1931). Recent commentators have read Lakeboat in a literary scope, tying Mamet's debut to Eugene O'Neill's sea plays (specifically the expressionist The Hairy Ape [1922]), Melville, and Hemingway's Nick Adams.8 Mamet uses Dale Katzman's arrival to the freighter to invoke sea adventures, both coming-of-age ones...