I wasn’t fully irresponsible when I wrote the A-word.
He was known to have been a very heavy drinker when he was a younger man.
This is a pattern that I see with many creative people, who have drawn inspiration from heavy drinking. If they don’t die young then after some point they go into repeating the witty things their younger mind came up with. Mamet is 74 now.
Okay, I didn't understand that you were expressing an informed opinion (thought you were just taking a "shot in the dark").
I have too little understanding of alcoholism to evaluate his "performance" in (staged) interviews.
In the three interviews (spaced over eight years) I viewed, he had a sympathetic (not adversarial) interviewer who was essentially allowing him to ramble on - punctuated by occasional plugs for his "new book."
Whether or not this is typical for alcoholics or for playwrights (or alcoholic playwrights) venturing forth into the political arena, I don't know.
After viewing (two days ago) the FIRST interview (recorded in 2014, with Peter Robinson for the "Hoover Institute"), I was sorely tempted to go right out and immediately order his (then) new book, "The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture." The man seemed prescient!
Now, after hearing him two more times, being interviewed years later, "spouting" the same old stuff, I'm not so sure it would be worth the investment in time and money. I have the feeling that he is capable of blowing his entire wad in a single interview.
This story here about his buying a post-and-beam house on a third-rate dirt road sounds picturesque and interesting - as a story. His experience with WW II-era Germans might sound interesting to Millennials, but I have lived in Germany for four decades, and have infinitely more such stories from my personal history.
Regards,