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What to make of this? Is Mamet railing against the historical resistance to minorities in Ivy League institutions, or against the dominance of the Ivy League in higher education at all? (For the record, Mamet himself went to Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt.) Is he saying that Harvard is a necessary evil, or that the true heroes are autodidacts who work toward a world where such evils become unnecessary? Or is it just a plug for good old-fashioned liberalism in the form of kindness to the downtrodden? Will this morality tale encourage the hyper-pressured children of the elite to ditch their private schools and Ritalin for home schooling?

God knows.

Henrietta By David Mamet, illustrated by Elizabeth Dahlie Houghton Mifflin Fiction Buy this book at B&N.com

I'm not a parent. Nevertheless, I'm concerned that today's schoolchildren are getting parables of higher education written by intellectual heavyweights, rather than cozy narratives about children at play, like the charming Betsy-Tacy series I enjoyed in my youth.

I would be wary of giving any kid a book that even hints at the tortuous, exclusionary application process required for admission to top-flight colleges and law schools; they'll have plenty of time to enjoy that later. Maybe this book will serve as a palliative for a particularly sophisticated and anxious child, but for kids who have yet to lose sleep over their SAT scores, reading David Mamet will do nothing but add new monsters to the foot of the bed.

Frankly, I am afraid of David Mamet. Sure, he hides out in Vermont and designs silly hunting gear for Banana Republic. And he's easy to parody. (My boyfriend's sketch comedy troupe, the Associates, does a mean "Glengarry Glen Girl Scout.") But I still admire him greatly. So I read this thing several times through to try to do the pig justice, as it were.

It just left me shrugging.

My insecurity was heightened by the fact that I was asked to write this review in part because I am a Harvard graduate (though of the college, not the Law School). So if there were some underlying meaning, I would look all the more foolish for not picking up on it.

I am hyper-sensitive to the fact that the classroom portion of my Harvard education left me, essentially, an expert in nothing. Nor do I feel broadly educated. This was made clear to me during a red-faced Thanksgiving of a few years back, when a family friend expressed shock that I didn't recognize some obscure biblical reference. I can't even remember what the reference was; all I remember is the humiliation: "You went to Harvard and you don't even know -- ?"

"She's just jealous," my mother whispered later. The family friend's daughter had gone to some no-name school. But the incident still stung. She was right: I don't know anything.

Meanwhile, here we have this pig from some no-name island, whose breadth of knowledge -- Hamlet, Oedipus, Henry Fielding -- is certainly far greater than that of many Harvard literature graduates. It must mean something.
salon.com | Dec. 15, 1999

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