Harold Pinter R.I.P.

A poet's ear for language and a flawless sense of dramatic rhythm'
Michael Billington reflects on the life and work of Harold Pinter and his immense contribution to the world of drama

The death of Harold Pinter comes as a great shock. We all knew, of course, that he had endured a succession of illnesses ever since 2000. But there was a physical toughness and tenacity of will about Harold that made us all believe he would survive for a few more years yet. Sadly, it was not to be.

My own memories of Harold, and it's hard to think of him in more formal terms, are entirely happy. We'd had a relatively distant professional relationship for many years. I'd reviewed his plays, sometimes favourably, sometimes not. (I made a spectacular ass of myself over the original production of Betrayal.) Then in 1992 I was approached by Faber and Faber to write a book about him. What was intended as a short book about his plays and politics turned, thanks to his openness, into a full-scale biography. I talked to Harold himself at great length, to his friends and colleagues. And what I discovered was that his plays, so often dubbed enigmatic and mysterious, were nearly all spun out of memories of his own experience. If they connected with audiences the world over, it was because he understood the insecurity of human life and the sense that it was often based on psychological and territorial battles.

Pinter's contribution to drama was immense. He had a poet's ear for language, an almost flawless sense of dramatic rhythm and the ability to distil the conflicts of daily life. I believe his plays, from The Room in 1957 to Celebration in 2000, will endure wind and weather. Indeed many of them already, such as The Birthday Party, The Homeconming and No Man's Land, have the status of modern classics. Pinter was also, of course, a highly political animal, as evidenced by his later plays, his crusading articles and speeches and his famous Nobel Lecture which brilliantly skewered the lies surrounding US foreign policy.

But, just a few hours after learning of his death, what I chiefly remember is the generosity of the man himself. Harold had a great talent for friendship, as the next few days will surely testify. He also had a remarkable sense of loyalty. Eight weeks ago I directed a group of LAMDA students in a triple-bill of Party Time, Celebration and the Nobel Lecture. At the time, Harold was extremely ill. But he had promised to come and see the productions and, on the final Saturday-night performance, he and his wife, Antonia, duly arrived. They not only saw the shows. Harold got a up and made a speech afterwards thanking all the students. He then stayed on to drink and chat with them. Only later did I realise how much of a physical effort it was for Harold. But it was a golden night for the student-actors and, I have to say, for me too. It was also typical of the man. Harold was a great dramatist and screenwriter, a ferocious polemicist, a fighter against all forms of hypocrisy. What we should also remember today is his generosity of spirit and his rage for life.

copyright: The Guardian

From Times Online
December 25, 2008
Pinter: not just a playwright, but an adjective too
Pinteresque: "marked especially by halting dialogue, uncertainty of identity, and air of menace" (OED).

Pinter on Pinteresque: "I've no idea what it means. Never have. I really don't."
Philippe Naughton

Few playwrights are honoured with their own eponymous adjective; even more rarely does it gain currency.

But so distinctive was the voice of Harold Pinter, who has died aged 78, that the first recorded use of the word Pinteresque came as early as 1960, just three years after the first production of any of his plays.

Its precise meaning has been the subject of academic theses and learned articles over the years since then although most people will have their own understanding of the word: Pinter's plays keep the audience guessing, his dialogue keeps them off-balance, unable to relax.

His most famous literary device was borrowed from Samuel Beckett, although it is never described as Beckettian. Like his friend and mentor, Pinter punctuated his scripts with the word "pause", followed by a number of dots to indicate its duration. For a particularly long, menacing pause, he wrote the word "silence".

Of his major works, Betrayal contains no less than 140 scripted pauses, The Caretaker 149 and The Homecoming 224.

But although Pinter later advised actors that they did not have to follow his pauses religiously – and said that he himself, when acting in his own plays, had ignored up to half of them – the pauses were clearly crucial. They helped destroy the words in between, to induce the sense of crisis, from words left unspoken.

Yet the writer himself resolutely rejected that "damn word" Pinteresque, including in a Newsnight Review interview in 2006 when he was asked by Kirsty Wark to "finally acknowledge that there is such a thing as a Pinteresque moment".

"I've no idea what it means. Never have. I really don't," he said. I can detect where a thing is 'Kafkaesque' or 'Chekhovian' but with respect to the 'Pinteresque' I can't define what it is myself. You use the term 'menace' and so on. I have no explanation of any of that really. What I write is what I write."