Biographer and theater critic John Lahr, the son of comic actor Bert Lahr, has been composing profiles for The New Yorker magazine since 1992. The following paragraph is drawn from the conclusion of his 10,000-word profile of David Mamet. Notice how the description of the cabin where the playwright works, the references to the books on his table, and the brief quotations from Mamet's sister and from Mamet himself all serve to reveal aspects of character.
from "Fortress Mamet"*
by John Lahr
Mamet types with his back to the window on a blue Olympia manual typewriter, above which a kerosene lamp is suspended by a chain from a beam smudged with black smoke. The special calm of the place is in part the peace of having no electricity; it is also the peace of the activity that goes on there. Writing has always been Mamet's way of containing terror, or what he calls "mental vomit." "David's brain is a very busy place. It's very cluttered," Lynn Mamet says. "Writing's the only thing that stops the thinking, you know," Mamet says. "It stops all that terrible noise that's in there." In "The Edge," where the billionaire bookworm thinks himself out of the backwoods, Mamet quite literally shows the triumph of thought over terror. It's something that he clearly works hard at in his own life. Across the room, on a table in front of the sofa, his serious reading is laid out: D.W. Winnicott's "Thinking About Children"; a special Hebrew prayer about "the good wife," whose twenty-two verses are traditionally read by the husband to his wife on holy days; and Seneca's "Letters from a Stoic." Mamet has underlined only one passage in Seneca: "Each day . . . acquire something which will help you to face poverty, or death, and other ills as well."
Selected Works by John Lahr:
- Notes on a Cowardly Lion: The Biography of Bert Lahr (Random House, 1969)
- Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles (The Overlook Press, 2000)
- Honky-Tonk Parade: The New Yorker Profiles (The Overlook Press, 2005)
* David Mamet's profile of David Mamet appeared in the November 17, 1997 issue of The New Yorker magazine and was reprinted in Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles (The Overlook Press, 2000).
