Podcast Summary: Old School with Shilo Brooks

Episode: David Mamet vs. the Snobs
Date: February 5, 2026
Host: Shiloh Brooks
Guest: David Mamet (Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, author, screenwriter)

Episode Overview

This episode features a lively and unsparing conversation between host Shiloh Brooks and David Mamet—a towering figure in American dramatic writing—about the transformative (but also often disappointing) power of books. Mamet reflects on his literary upbringing in the Chicago Public Library, his deep affinity for Midwestern writers, and, most notably, his evolving views on Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street. Together, they dive deep into questions of literary taste, objective standards, the role of snobbery in “high culture,” and whether great books can—or even should—aim to improve us.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Mamet’s Literary Beginnings: The Library as Teacher

• Chicago Public Library as Alma Mater

  • Mamet never resonated with traditional schooling, finding it boring. Instead, he educated himself by browsing library stacks, discovering books and new authors by chance.
  • Quote:

    "I always loved reading... so I would just go into the fiction stacks and pick up a book at random and read a few pages and say yes, or read a few pages and say no." (01:15)

• Experience of Browsing

  • Mamet laments the disappearance of open browsing—and with it, serendipitous literary discovery.
  • Quote:

    "Browsing allowed one to engage the attention with no downside of cost of, I bought this stupid fucking book and now I have to read it." (03:17)

Main Street: Early Impact and Changing Perspectives

• First Encounter with Main Street

  • Read at about age 10, it introduced Mamet to Midwestern writers reflecting worlds familiar to his Chicago upbringing.
  • Quote:

    "It was my introduction to literature... guys and women writing about a life that I recognized rather than a life that they imagined and called it writing." (07:30)

• Plot Summary

  • Main Street centers around Carol Kennicott, a city-educated woman who marries a rural doctor, only to be appalled by the small town’s perceived backwardness and unsuccessfully tries to “improve” its culture.

Critique of Sinclair Lewis & Literary Elitism

• Main Street’s Characters and Motives

  • Mamet argues that Lewis projects his preconceptions onto his characters, creating “cardboard figures.”
  • Carol is less an idealist, more a “busybody”—imposing her taste without empathy or self-questioning.
  • Quote:

    "She's not an idealist in my book. She's a busybody... Telling them to improve their architecture is not going to improve anybody's life." (15:29)

• The Limits of Cultural Critique

  • The novel's supposed critique of small-town intolerance is, in Mamet’s view, merely the flip side of Carol’s own snobbery.
  • Quote:

    "She wants to turn everything into, in effect, Colonial Williamsburg." (16:00)

  • Lewis, he feels, was staging a sociological agenda rather than rendering authentic complexity.

• Mamet’s Defense of Small-Town “Philistines”

  • Praises ordinary working people’s dignity and practical wisdom, resists “improvement” from cultural elites.
  • Quote:

    "They'd actually carved a living out of the prairie. These were the people that Sinclair Lewis is, in the guise of Carol Kennecott, actually looking down on. So I say, hell, I'll vote with them every day." (10:50)

The Question of Taste: Is There an Objective Standard?

• Subjectivity and Authority

  • Mamet champions radical literary subjectivity: there is no universal measure of taste or greatness; the question is always, “Do you like it?”
  • Quote:

    "Good taste is what I like." (25:49) "No, it makes it personal." (on abandoning objective standards) (33:47)

• Against Cultural Paternalism

  • Skeptical of academic and institutional attempts to dictate “what’s good for you” in art.
  • Quote:

    "If there's an actual objective standard, A, and it's getting put over by these jumped up people to call teachers onto the defenseless, call students. So what am I being told? I'm being told I'm wrong. I'm being told I'm stupid. Which is what Carol Kennecott is saying to the people there." (36:36)

• Debate with Brooks

  • Brooks wonders whether Mamet’s relativism—“we like what we like”—undermines all standards and denies the possibility of shared culture.
  • Mamet responds, invoking Karl Popper and infinite regress: “at some point...you gotta say there’s a way things are.” (35:08)

Art, Politics, and Philosophy

• Can Art Improve Us?

  • Mamet is adamant: art’s job is not to make us “better." Improvement is the domain of dictators and ideologues, not artists.
  • Quote:

    "It’s not the job of art to improve us. It’s the job of dictators to improve us." (40:00)

• Truth, Morality, and Western Tradition

  • Proposes that in practical terms, morality—not philosophical “truth”—is (or should be) enshrined in law.
  • Quote:

    "How do we know what's moral? Well, the Western tradition would say you can find that—it's in the Bible... what is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. That's it. That's enough." (48:22)

The Craft of Writing: Mamet's Own Practice

• On Writing in Different Forms

  • Novels allow psychological expatiation; drama is action, not thought. In playwriting, he strives to strip away narration for pure interaction.
  • Quote:

    "When a dramatist does that, the audience loses interest because that's not why they came to the theater... That's what the best of drama is." (56:10)

• On Taste and Re-Reading

  • Values “well written” work he can return to every few years, although defining what makes writing ‘good’ eventually comes full circle to personal taste.
  • Quote:

    "What makes it good is — so now we get into an infinite regression. It's good because it's well written. Well, how do I know it's well written? Because I like it." (53:30)

• Advice on Reading Introductions

  • Always read introductions last, so your judgment of the book isn’t colored by another’s opinion. (54:10)

• On Research

  • Recounts Shel Silverstein's advice:

    "Never do research. When you do research, all you're doing is... reading something by somebody who didn't do research." (54:27)

Literary Preferences & Dislikes

• Best and Worst

  • Shakespeare: Peerless, impossible to improve upon.

    "I can't do any of that with Shakespeare. As good as I may be, it's absolutely impossible for me to do anything other than look at his work with awe." (57:22)

  • Least favorite: Dickens. (58:18)
  • Hemingway: Genius; Fitzgerald and Salinger: not good writers; Steinbeck and Dos Passos: not fans.

• Favorite American Writers & the Chicago School

  • Reveres Dreiser, Willa Cather, John O’Hara, and the Chicagoans who made American literature distinct.
  • Notes the pivotal role of Chicago as the "point at which America ceased to be Europe." (60:32)

Reflections on Reading and Aging

• Why Read Main Street?

  • Admits Main Street changed his life only as an entry point to a larger world of books; doesn't care for it now and doesn’t prescribe it for others.

    "My thinking about life is rather different at 78 than it was at 11. Did Main Street age? No, books don't age. People age." (29:30)

• On Literary Canon

  • Reaffirms that people should read whatever genuinely interests them—or even more, writes with a half-joking caveat:

    "Their book should be limited to what interests them, only superseded by things that I've written." (29:59)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I always wondered about the adjective remedial thinking. That was a special kind of reading that obviously I was so fucking stupid that I didn't know about." — David Mamet (01:10)
• "She wants to turn everything into, in effect, Colonial Williamsburg." (16:00)
• "Good taste is what I like." (25:49)
• "I'm completely opposed to the idea it's the point of art, to better us. Because have you gone to an art museum lately? I have. It's garbage." (49:10)
• "What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. That's it. That's enough." (48:22)
• "Shel Silverstein... said, never do research. When you do research, all you're doing is reading something by somebody who didn't do research." (54:27)
• "I can't do any of that with Shakespeare. As good as I may be, it's absolutely impossible for me to do anything other than look at his work with awe." (57:22)

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment Description | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Mamet’s Schooling and Library Days | 00:35–02:49 | | "Browsing" and Book Discovery | 02:49–03:40 | | Encounter with Main Street | 03:40–05:48 | | Main Street Summary and Impact | 05:48–08:10 | | Critique of Carol Kennicott & Small-Town Portrayal | 12:18–17:12 | | On Literary “Taste,” Standards, and Objective Merit | 25:49–39:04 | | Art, Politics, and Truth | 40:56–48:22 | | Personal Literary Preferences | 57:10–61:58 |

Tone & Style

Mamet is unapologetically blunt, irreverent, and wry—often deploying mockery, anecdote, and strong language to make his points. Shiloh Brooks, meanwhile, is thoughtful but persistent, providing gentle pushback and philosophical framing, keeping the conversation both challenging and lively.

For Listeners

This episode is a masterclass in the pleasures of disagreement, the hazards of snobbery, and the often humorous humility of loving books. It’s especially valuable for anyone interested in the debate over literary canons, the role of reading in developing self-knowledge, and the ongoing tension between “improving” art and art-for-art’s-sake.