Who Are David Mamet's Influences?

Oscar-nominated, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, playwright, essayist and director David Mamet has always been a controversial figure. He is unafraid of saying what he feels and has made a career out of artfully doing so. Mamet regularly quotes from his influences, his education - formal and informal seem to have deeply inspired him.

Mamet is fond of quoting from the Stoics, the Stoical philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius and/or Epictetus. He acknowledges his debt to Stanislavsky, he owes something to Sanford Meisner for the teaching he received at the Neighbourhood Playhouse.

He is clearly inspired in his playwriting by Artistotle, and clearly works using his conventions set out in Poetics.

He is also influenced by writers such as Thortstein Veblen who wrote the The Theory of the Leisure Class and Bruno Bettelheim who wrote The Uses of Enchantment.

Mamet is further inspired by Preston Sturges, the American film director.

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