Truth be told

WE are just happy to hear the truth, in any form the brave teller wishes to tell it. Hearing the truth, especially about the U.S.A., is so rare these days. We don’t care if it comes varnished, unvarnished, with or without humor, sarcasm, tears or bluster; the teller can choose the method, and we are grateful.

We applaud Harold Pinter for telling it like it is. If journalists weren’t so cowardly and did their job properly, he wouldn’t have to talk about it at all.

JEAN BETTS

Wellington, New Zealand

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REGARDING Mr. James C. Taylor’s unfortunate article, I can only hope that his youth is to blame for the gaps in his understanding of Harold Pinter on “art, truth and politics.”

I recommend that Taylor spend some time on Pinter’s website, where he has much to learn about Pinter’s full canon and his decades of human rights and free expression advocacy.

Taylor writes, “Certainly, many of the points Pinter makes are accurate and deserve attention, but the scope of his lecture feels limited.” He should review the beginning of the lecture, where Pinter noted that Soviet atrocities are well documented, in stark contrast to those of the U.S. Hence his focus on the U.S. and its ally, Great Britain. Did Taylor miss that part?

He laments that Pinter should have addressed Orhan Pamuk’s current travails in Turkey. Censorship (and torture) in Turkey may be news for Taylor, but it is familiar ground for Pinter, as most theatergoers already know. Harold Pinter and his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, are veteran members of International PEN and have long advocated on behalf of Pamuk and other writers like him worldwide. Pinter wrote “One for the Road” in the 1980s after interviewing victims of torture in Turkey. Please catch up. Pinter can’t be expected to do it for you in the course of his Nobel lecture.

BETH CASKIE

La Quinta

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MR. Taylor attacks Mr. Pinter not only for what he has written, but also for what he fails to write. Someone should inform Taylor that no speech, even his, can cover every aspect of a topic. Pinter’s Nobel acceptance speech was geared to make a point. It does it brilliantly. Pointing out the hypocrisy of the world’s two most powerful leaders, Bush and Blair, needs a world stage if it is to be listened to. Mr. Pinter was given the opportunity to speak to the world, and he did ... forcefully and eloquently.

TOM MAULDIN

Savannah, Ga.

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IF Dario Fo were delivering his Nobel lecture this year, and if his government had preemptively attacked Iraq and was engaged in an illegal and immoral war without an end, would he still have delivered a “lighthearted and even zany” address?

NORMAN AND BETTY EAGLE

Oxnard