Pinter, Master of Menacing Drama, Wins Nobel Prize

Harold Pinter, the modernist playwright known for his searing explorations of power, menace and half-articulated truths, won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, just days after his 75th birthday.

In its citation, the Swedish Academy in Stockholm called Pinter “the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century.”

In frail health because of a three-year battle with cancer of the esophagus, Pinter told reporters outside his London home that he was delighted and surprised by the honor, which carries a cash reward of about $1.3 million.

He had not been among those identified as favorites for this year’s prize, but the jury’s choice met with immediate and widespread approval.

“I couldn’t be happier. This is a brilliant choice,” fellow British playwright David Hare said. Tom Stoppard called the award “wholly deserved.”

Edward Albee, in a voicemail message, said, “He’s a splendid writer and a good political activist. I can’t think of a better choice.”

“This is a terrific recognition of a truly remarkable modern writer,” said Donald Margulies, who won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for his play “Dinner With Friends.” “His work is a compendium of so many themes that have become a part of Western culture. And he has had a profound effect on the way plays are constructed.”

Pinter is recognized for his ability to distill the sense of uncertainty and dread that afflicts contemporary culture into small, intense scenes that vibrate with peril, mystery and dark irony. His themes and his style have influenced many of today’s playwrights.

The Swedish Academy said Pinter’s work “uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.” His influence on his art is such that the term “Pinteresque” has come to describe “a particular atmosphere and environment in drama,” it said.

Always politically engaged, Pinter has explored oppression in his art and in public life. As a teenage conscientious objector, he had to appear before a magistrate to answer for his refusal to participate in Britain’s national service. He has been a vociferous defender of human rights and an opponent of the war in Iraq.

In recent years, he has labeled British Prime Minister Tony Blair a “war criminal” and the United States “a country run by a bunch of criminals” with Blair its “hired Christian thug.” He added his name last year to a short-lived bid seeking Blair’s impeachment.

“We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East,’ ” he said in a speech this year.

Hare, who dissected the decision to invade Iraq in his recent play “Stuff Happens,” said that the academy’s selection may have had a political message. Pinter has been vindicated for a “bold and brave political stand against the policies of the British and American governments,” he suggested.

Looking gaunt and leaning on a cane at his doorstep, Pinter described himself Thursday as “bowled over” by the news of the award.

“I am deeply moved,” he told one Swedish reporter who telephoned. “I have no words at the moment. I shall have words by the time I get to Stockholm,” where he will formally accept the prize in December.

A poet, actor and director in addition to a being prolific writer of plays and screenplays in a career spanning more than half a century, Pinter announced in March that he preferred to concentrate on poetry.

“I think I’ve written 29 plays. Isn’t that enough? I think it’s enough for me. I’ve found other forms now,” he said.

Among Pinter’s best-known works are “The Caretaker,” “The Birthday Party,” “The Homecoming,” “Betrayal,” and “The Dumb Waiter.” He wrote screenplays for “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and “The Servant,” among others.

His most recent short play, for radio, is a collaboration with music composer James Clarke and was broadcast on Pinter’s birthday Monday by the BBC. Titled “Voices,” it combines fragments from five of Pinter’s later plays with Clarke’s music. It was summed up by a headline in the Independent newspaper, “Menace Set to Music,” which described it as “a fragmented narrative on cruelty, torture and oppression.”

Over the weekend, Pinter was feted by a gathering of actors and writers at Dublin’s Gate Theater.

Jerry Patch, one of America’s leading dramaturges who is resident artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, noted that few playwrights had won the prize and that “it’s nice to get a Nobel back in the theater.”

He said Pinter was a creative descendant of Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett, who won the prize in 1969. Many observers thought that “once you get to that kind of existential despair found in Beckett, there is no more to write,” Patch said. “But Pinter found more to say. Beckett was not a dead end for him. He took what Beckett had done to the next step, in a way that feels more real in terms of human behavior. And he has influenced two generations of writers in England and America.”

Patch cited David Mamet as probably the most successful of the Americans influenced by Pinter.

Pinter has often acknowledged his debt to Beckett, who died in 1989, and whose works included “Waiting for Godot” and “Krapp’s Last Tape.” He said he admired Beckett’s uncompromising honesty. “I’ll buy his goods, hook, line and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely.... His work is beautiful.”

Pinter was born Oct. 10, 1930, in Hackney, East London, into a working-class Jewish family. His father had a tailor and dressmaking shop.

During World War II, Pinter, like many urban children amid the Battle of Britain, was shipped away to rural England for his safety, and during this forced, traumatic separation he immersed himself in reading, developing his love of theater and contemporary writing.

When he returned from Cornwall in 1944, he took part in school productions in Hackney before winning a place in the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which he attended for two years.

His first short play, “The Room,” was written in 1957 and performed at Bristol University, at a time when he was also writing poetry and appearing in productions under the stage name David Baron.

“The Caretaker,” produced in 1960, was his first critical success. It tells the story of two brothers living together, one of whom brings home a tramp for a brief stay.

The dialogue, punctuated with the famous Pinter pauses, hidden emotions and struggle for power within familial relations, caused it to be hailed by audiences and critics alike.

In his book “The Life and Work of Harold Pinter,” biographer Michael Billington quoted one newspaper’s account of the opening night when the curtain fell:

“Tumultuous chaos. Twelve curtain calls. And then, when the lights went up, the whole audience rose to applaud the author, who sat beaming in the circle.”

Pinter’s first full-length play staged in London was “The Birthday Party,” in 1958. It folded within a week, scorned by audiences and most critics. But Harold Hobson of the Sunday Times staked his reputation on it in a column published the day after the play closed, and he was ultimately proved right.

It was revived after the success of “The Caretaker,” and has become one of Pinter’s best-liked and most often-produced plays.

Daniszewski reported from London and Shirley from Los Angeles.

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‘A modern classic’

Excerpts from the Swedish Academy’s citation awarding the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature to British playwright Harold Pinter:

“Harold Pinter is generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century. That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: ‘Pinteresque.’ ”

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“Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles. With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution. Pinter’s drama was first perceived as a variation of absurd theater, but has later more aptly been characterized as ‘comedy of menace,’ a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations.”

Source: Associated Press

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Better-known works by Pinter

Plays

“The Room” (1957)

“The Birthday Party” (1957)

“The Dumb Waiter” (1957)

“A Slight Ache” (1958)

“The Hothouse” (1958)

“The Caretaker” (1959)

“A Night Out” (1959)

“Night School” (1960)

“The Dwarfs” (1960)

“The Collection” (1961)

“The Lover” (1962)

“Tea Party” (1964)

“The Homecoming” (1964)

“The Basement” (1966)

“Landscape” (1967)

“Silence” (1968)

“Old Times” (1970)

“Monologue” (1972)

“No Man’s Land” (1974)

“Betrayal” (1978)

“Family Voices” (1980)

“Other Places” (1982)

“A Kind of Alaska” (1982)

“Victoria Station” (1982)

“One for the Road” (1984)

“Mountain Language” (1988)

“The New World Order” (1991)

“Party Time” (1991)

“Moonlight” (1993)

“Ashes to Ashes” (1996)

“Celebration” (1999)

“Remembrance of Things Past” [adaptation, with Di Trevis] (2000)

Screenplays

“The Caretaker” (1963)

“The Servant” (1963)

“The Pumpkin Eater” (1963)

“The Quiller Memorandum” (1965)

“Accident” (1966)

“The Birthday Party” (1967)

“The Go-Between” (1969)

“The Homecoming” (1969)

“Langrishe Go Down” (1970)

“The Proust Screenplay” (1972)

“The Last Tycoon” (1974)

“The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1980)

“Betrayal” (1981)

“Victory” (1982)

“Turtle Diary” (1984)

“The Handmaid’s Tale” (1987)

“Reunion” (1988)

“Heat of the Day” (1988)

“Comfort of Strangers” (1989)

“The Trial” (1989)

“The Dreaming Child” (1997)

“The Tragedy of King Lear” (2000)

Poetry and Prose

“Poems and Prose 1949-1977” (1978)

“Various Voices: Poetry, Prose, Politics, 1948-1998” (1998)

“The Disappeared and Other Poems” (2002)

“War” (2003)

Novels

“The Dwarfs” (1990)

Source: Associated Press

Los Angeles Times