Special honour for Pinteresque pretensions

Controversial, out-spoken and recently described as “a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad”, Harold Pinter was never going to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature quietly. While he made off with the hefty $1.3m prize, others began to question whether it was his plays or his political posturing which landed him the title of Nobel Laureate.On 13 October, Pinter became the first Brit to take the coveted award since VS Naipul in 2001. He had not been considered a frontrunner in the competition, with rumours tipping Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, Syrian poet Adonis and American writer Joyce Carol Oates. Pinter, who celebrated his 75th birthday this week, is undeniably one of the foremost representativesof modern British drama. But despite his near-celebrity status his plays have not always achieved the commercial success of his contemporaries, meaning that many of his works still have to be performed in subsidised theatres.The difficulty with Pinter’s plays is that the distinctive ‘Pinteresque’ style, for which he is so famous, seems to be created by the simple trick of withholding basic information, lendinghis humdrum dialogue an aura of elusive significance. In an attempt to develop an atmosphere of enigma and vague menace, Pinter creates a sense of detachment and rigorous control, rendering his characters little more than specimens in his theatrical experiment. Of course he has had dramatic hits, most notably with his early work, The Caretaker, a gritty, kitchen-sink style comedy which has spawned a generation of copycat recreations, but his later works have failed to similarly inspire audiences.This is not the first time that the Nobel committee has honoured a controversial playwright. Just last year, Austria’s rather unpopular Elfriede Jelinek took the prize much to the consternation of many of her countrymen, who were offended by her known hostility to the ruling right-wing Freedom Party. A cynic might note a political pattern emerging and one cannot help but think that the Swedish Nobel committee, a famously peace-loving country whose people, if not their government, were extremely vocal in their anti-Iraq war protests, would be impressed by Pinter, a man who has extolled pacifist, anti-American sentiments in the British House of Commons.Indeed, his hatred of America seems to verge on the pathological and in a speech made in October 2002 he claimed “the American elephant… has grown to be a monster of grotesque and obscene proportions”.Born in Hackney on 10 October 1930, Pinter was prosecuted for being a conscientious objector in 1949 when he refused to carry out National Service, and since then he has become increasingly vocal about his vehement opposition to Western imperialism and destruction. The American right-wingers are predictably unimpressed, with one pro-Bush website making the delightful understatement, “Pinter is not our kind of guy”. Pinter’s politics are hardly unusual within the predominantly liberal, left-wing luvvie community. The majority of modern British playwrights are notable for a dogged politicisation of their plays, to the extent that dramatistslike Tom Stoppard are criticised for not being political enough. There are many who hold with Pinter’s political views and few would deny him the right to speak out against the atrocities of war, but the fact remains that whether it was intended or not, the Nobel committee made a highly politicised choice of Laureate this year. However, perhaps the extremity of Pinter’s politics would be less significant if his literary canon was able to support the magnitude of the prestigious Nobel Prize alone.ARCHIVE: 2nd week MT 2005