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Wilson: A consideration of the sources
Book by Mamet, David
Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
3 people are currently reading
122 people want to read
About the author
David Mamet
232 books745 followersDavid Alan Mamet is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for his exploration of masculinity.
As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).
Mamet's recent books include The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, an acerbic commentary on the movie business.
As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).
Mamet's recent books include The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, an acerbic commentary on the movie business.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 13, 2016
I read up to page 60 and decided to set this one down because its fragmented nature made it difficult to read. Mamet formatted the novel like a scholarly journal, packed with footnotes that are most irrelevant to the reader (this is one of the ways that Mamet actually parodies scholarly journals). On top of this, there is no clear storyline (at least thus far). The book feels like more of a post-modern art piece than an enjoyable read. I think the concept is very interesting and has potential but the very fact this book is a series of "downloaded memories" from Wilson's ex-wife without clear background information given on the world that it is set in leaves me too in the dark (and confused) to really engage with it.
Did not finish
April 18, 2022I picked this book up at a library sale because I liked the cover, but unfortunately I found it unreadable. I forced myself to continue as far as page 50, but I found myself reading the pages over and over again as I just couldn't concentrate.
Way too experimental for my taste.
Way too experimental for my taste.
June 24, 2010
I hope that Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources is not a reaction to reading Torah with the great Jewish rabbi, Lawrence Kushner, with whom Mamet wrote Cities of Refuge (a stimulating devotional book based on the Torah). Some of the arguments he makes for the faux literary phenomena in Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources aren’t that far-fetched from some of the scholarly articles I read as both a literature major in college and as a student of the Bible in my doctoral work. Of course, the fact that Rabbi Larry Kushner appears in a positive footnote on page 58 (of my edition) resolves some of my concern.
Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources is a parody on literary and historical scholarship of all kinds. It is an extended version of the type of humor you might have seen in National Lampoon’s glory days before Doug Kenney’s suicide (?) or The Wittenberg Door humor magazine. Some of the writers of The Onion might be able to sustain this level for a few paragraphs, but they reach for a less cerebral audience than Mamet does here. This work is so far from Glengarry Glen Ross, the stage play/film that was so iconic it was itself parodied in Tim Schaefer’s Grim Fandango, and The Spanish Prisoner that you’d find it hard to believe it was penned by Mamet except for the fact that there is an earthy erudition that assaults you when you least expect it.
The footnotes in Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources are the most entertaining I’ve read since William Goldman’s The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure (surpassing even the same author’s The Silent Gondoliers). I love such oxymoronic entries as client-centered therapist Carl Rogers allegedly writing a book called The Devil Made Me Do It (as well as one called Go to Your Room) or Martin Buber’s famous work on recognizing the “other” in the relationship being twisted into a book called Us and Them such that relationship becomes polarization. I also loved bizarre cultural references such as referring to “Rinty” (the nickname used on the ancient television show, Rin Tin Tin, when writing of the Tell Hound or injecting “d’Artagnan” into a discussion of bathos versus pathos.
The attenuated “chapters” offer a disconcerting anomie that is as much like stream of consciousness as one can get without resorting to the concatenated prose of Joyce and Faulkner. If Finnegan’s Wake had been written primarily for laughs (and who is to say that it wasn’t?), it would have looked vaguely like Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources has been formed.
But I have failed to offer even a reasonable facsimile of the plot. Plot!? Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources has less to do with the former President’s supposed second wife, Ginger, who wrote a cryptic message using her urine (or did someone else write that message using her body fluid as his/her preferred medium?) than the map of Dublin charts the course of Joyce’s Ulysses. Certainly both Ginger in the former and Dublin in the latter are there and, presumably, used structurally, but both get shoved to the outer fringes of consciousness throughout major sections of the book, only to return as grounding (and I suppose I use the term loosely with regard to Wilson). I have shelved this as a science-fiction book because it is set in the future and refers to the settlement of Mars (even a University of South Wilson on Mars), but there isn’t any scientific speculation within the book. Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources is simply a hilarious peregrination through faux literary works with the occasional gem of worthwhile thought in the midst of the frivolity. At least, it seems to me that there are occasional pearls that are intentionally lucid enough to provoke thought (if not agreement). Let me share my favorites. I will even use the cynical view of history in a history class that I teach:
“The ‘past,’ reflection will reveal, is merely our idea of what happened. It has no connection whatever to the (should they, in fact, exist) actual events which have (perhaps) transpired. Even if we were not manipulated by an outside (human) force, our memory is imperfect, our methods of recording liable to decay, loss and mistranscription (let alone analysis).” (p. 129)
It is certainly overstated, but it has enough veracity to introduce my usual warnings about geschichte versus historie (actual events versus narrative, raw data versus thesis). Again, I rather enjoyed his comical expression of King Louis Onze’s faith for it touches on questions of faith, in general:
“Or, better, we might say, the ‘catalytic moment,’ for who can say what is the source of his (or anyone’s) faith? As it is, or as we perceive it as a ‘recognition,’ must we not say that it (the faith) was ‘there all the time’ – that it is ‘immanent,’ that it, perhaps, is neither a ‘hint,’ nor a ‘memory’ of God, or the Godhead, but it is God HimSelf. And that that’s why we like it.” (p. 212)
Here, in the midst of playfulness, Mamet says something that many of us can resonate with. It is a transcendent suggestion of God’s self-communication with humanity, freely given to all, but (as a given to freedom), not accepted by all. I am startled by its similarity with a volume I’m reading by a Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner. Compare this:
“…our basic statement that man is the event of God’s absolute self-communication does not refer to a statement which is valid only for this or that group of people as distinguished from others, for example, only for the baptized or the justified as distinguished from pagans or sinners. …the statement that man as subject is the event of God’s self-communication is a statement which refers to absolutely all men, and which expresses an existential of every person.” (Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 127)
In so asserting that, Rahner isn’t advocating what some call “universal salvation.” He goes on to suggest that it takes the response of a free individual to receive that self-communication from God. In short, it takes that “catalytic moment” in which one realizes that God is available to her or him. Personally, I don’t know if Mamet was allowing some of his authentic belief to enter into his playful catechism on non-existent literary works, but I suspect his bent toward Jewish mysticism would allow that.
Do I recommend this work? I don’t know. As with Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses, Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources is not for everybody. Indeed, after a conversation I recently heard on the train (where one rider said to another, “I’ll grant he’s ambitious. He was reading Faulkner the other day. That’s a lot of effort for very little return.”), I suppose I should say, as with The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, Mamet’s synapse-firing verbal labyrinths aren’t for everybody. At times, I even wondered if there was a point, but just kept marching on because the journey was everything. I laughed, I pondered, and I had a unique experience. Is it great literature? Perhaps. Does it deserve 5 stars? Not if I cannot recommend it to a wider group of people. Is it a book unlike any I’ve read before? Of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be appealing to iconic works that bear reading and rereading in order to suggest what this book is “like.” Would I read it again? I probably would only reread it in brief sections for purposes of amusement. After all, we already have one Finnegan’s Wake and, as near as I can tell when I descend into a Dublin fog to read it, it wasn’t done primarily for laughs. Does that make it better? I don’t know. Joyce’s work has stood the test of time. Perhaps, in the 23rd century, Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources will be as subject to misguided and well-meaning attempts to interpret it as though portrayed within the book itself. Wouldn’t that be a high compliment?
Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources is a parody on literary and historical scholarship of all kinds. It is an extended version of the type of humor you might have seen in National Lampoon’s glory days before Doug Kenney’s suicide (?) or The Wittenberg Door humor magazine. Some of the writers of The Onion might be able to sustain this level for a few paragraphs, but they reach for a less cerebral audience than Mamet does here. This work is so far from Glengarry Glen Ross, the stage play/film that was so iconic it was itself parodied in Tim Schaefer’s Grim Fandango, and The Spanish Prisoner that you’d find it hard to believe it was penned by Mamet except for the fact that there is an earthy erudition that assaults you when you least expect it.
The footnotes in Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources are the most entertaining I’ve read since William Goldman’s The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure (surpassing even the same author’s The Silent Gondoliers). I love such oxymoronic entries as client-centered therapist Carl Rogers allegedly writing a book called The Devil Made Me Do It (as well as one called Go to Your Room) or Martin Buber’s famous work on recognizing the “other” in the relationship being twisted into a book called Us and Them such that relationship becomes polarization. I also loved bizarre cultural references such as referring to “Rinty” (the nickname used on the ancient television show, Rin Tin Tin, when writing of the Tell Hound or injecting “d’Artagnan” into a discussion of bathos versus pathos.
The attenuated “chapters” offer a disconcerting anomie that is as much like stream of consciousness as one can get without resorting to the concatenated prose of Joyce and Faulkner. If Finnegan’s Wake had been written primarily for laughs (and who is to say that it wasn’t?), it would have looked vaguely like Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources has been formed.
But I have failed to offer even a reasonable facsimile of the plot. Plot!? Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources has less to do with the former President’s supposed second wife, Ginger, who wrote a cryptic message using her urine (or did someone else write that message using her body fluid as his/her preferred medium?) than the map of Dublin charts the course of Joyce’s Ulysses. Certainly both Ginger in the former and Dublin in the latter are there and, presumably, used structurally, but both get shoved to the outer fringes of consciousness throughout major sections of the book, only to return as grounding (and I suppose I use the term loosely with regard to Wilson). I have shelved this as a science-fiction book because it is set in the future and refers to the settlement of Mars (even a University of South Wilson on Mars), but there isn’t any scientific speculation within the book. Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources is simply a hilarious peregrination through faux literary works with the occasional gem of worthwhile thought in the midst of the frivolity. At least, it seems to me that there are occasional pearls that are intentionally lucid enough to provoke thought (if not agreement). Let me share my favorites. I will even use the cynical view of history in a history class that I teach:
“The ‘past,’ reflection will reveal, is merely our idea of what happened. It has no connection whatever to the (should they, in fact, exist) actual events which have (perhaps) transpired. Even if we were not manipulated by an outside (human) force, our memory is imperfect, our methods of recording liable to decay, loss and mistranscription (let alone analysis).” (p. 129)
It is certainly overstated, but it has enough veracity to introduce my usual warnings about geschichte versus historie (actual events versus narrative, raw data versus thesis). Again, I rather enjoyed his comical expression of King Louis Onze’s faith for it touches on questions of faith, in general:
“Or, better, we might say, the ‘catalytic moment,’ for who can say what is the source of his (or anyone’s) faith? As it is, or as we perceive it as a ‘recognition,’ must we not say that it (the faith) was ‘there all the time’ – that it is ‘immanent,’ that it, perhaps, is neither a ‘hint,’ nor a ‘memory’ of God, or the Godhead, but it is God HimSelf. And that that’s why we like it.” (p. 212)
Here, in the midst of playfulness, Mamet says something that many of us can resonate with. It is a transcendent suggestion of God’s self-communication with humanity, freely given to all, but (as a given to freedom), not accepted by all. I am startled by its similarity with a volume I’m reading by a Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner. Compare this:
“…our basic statement that man is the event of God’s absolute self-communication does not refer to a statement which is valid only for this or that group of people as distinguished from others, for example, only for the baptized or the justified as distinguished from pagans or sinners. …the statement that man as subject is the event of God’s self-communication is a statement which refers to absolutely all men, and which expresses an existential of every person.” (Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 127)
In so asserting that, Rahner isn’t advocating what some call “universal salvation.” He goes on to suggest that it takes the response of a free individual to receive that self-communication from God. In short, it takes that “catalytic moment” in which one realizes that God is available to her or him. Personally, I don’t know if Mamet was allowing some of his authentic belief to enter into his playful catechism on non-existent literary works, but I suspect his bent toward Jewish mysticism would allow that.
Do I recommend this work? I don’t know. As with Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses, Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources is not for everybody. Indeed, after a conversation I recently heard on the train (where one rider said to another, “I’ll grant he’s ambitious. He was reading Faulkner the other day. That’s a lot of effort for very little return.”), I suppose I should say, as with The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, Mamet’s synapse-firing verbal labyrinths aren’t for everybody. At times, I even wondered if there was a point, but just kept marching on because the journey was everything. I laughed, I pondered, and I had a unique experience. Is it great literature? Perhaps. Does it deserve 5 stars? Not if I cannot recommend it to a wider group of people. Is it a book unlike any I’ve read before? Of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be appealing to iconic works that bear reading and rereading in order to suggest what this book is “like.” Would I read it again? I probably would only reread it in brief sections for purposes of amusement. After all, we already have one Finnegan’s Wake and, as near as I can tell when I descend into a Dublin fog to read it, it wasn’t done primarily for laughs. Does that make it better? I don’t know. Joyce’s work has stood the test of time. Perhaps, in the 23rd century, Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources will be as subject to misguided and well-meaning attempts to interpret it as though portrayed within the book itself. Wouldn’t that be a high compliment?
April 21, 2024
Um…this isn’t the David Mamet that you think it is. This was…not a pleasant reading experience. Cool cover (I know, I know, I shouldn’t have judged based on that), but other than that, this was a difficult book to get through. May have been going for humor or even satire, but perhaps my intellect did was not up to the challenge - short essay(ish) writings with footnotes that just ended up trying my patience. I sort of hated this book. But, I don’t like saying that - I am sure that there is joy to be found given the right audience, but I am not that audience.
November 20, 2017
at the time i read this i was wtf but that's the sign of a good book. i remember writing quotes from this so i knew i was onto something. i'd always read comics but i was into dc thompson more than stan lee or alan moore and comics were only just gaining serious literary recognition. it's a beautiful magic universe of madness, poetry, insight, wisdom and space
April 27, 2025
It is impossible to rate a book both ZERO stars and FIVE stars at the same time. I dare you to try and read this. I DOUBLE dare you. I dare you to pick it up and read two whole pages. Mamet fucks with words and language like no other writer on the planet.
October 13, 2016
The sustained high-level whatever-it-is of David Mamet's book WILSON repeatedly and consistently provides me with two essentials of being/ remaining/ becoming human: Bemusement, and Helpless Laughter. (Some say his book is a hilarious satire on false scholarship.)
Currently reading
September 4, 2007I've picked this up and put it down again about five times so far. I'm through with the first chapter, it's incredibly difficult to read!
December 20, 2007
One of the more odd novels that Mamet has written.
March 29, 2012
I understood very little. I'll have to make a second pass.
May 24, 2018
hated this stupid book
January 4, 2018
Mamet parodies academics. how much of what we know about history is just random junk that stuck?
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews