Harold Pinter (1930-)

Harold Pinter (1930-)
English playwright who achieved international success as one of the most complex post-World War II dramatist. Pinter's plays are noted for their use of silence to increase tension, understatement, and cryptic small talk. Equally recognizable are the 'Pinteresque' themes - nameless menace, erotic fantasy, obsession and jealousy, family hatred and mental disturbance. "I don't know how music can influence writing, but it has been very important for me, both jazz and classical music. I feel a sense of music continually in writing, which is different matter from having been influenced by it." (Pinter in Playwrights at Work, ed. by George Plimpton, 2000)
Harold Pinter was born in Hacney, as small, working-class neighborhood near London's East End, as the son of a Jewish tailor. On the outbreak of the World War II he was evacuated out of the city; he returned to London when he was 14. In school Pinter read particularly the works of Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway. He was educated at Hackney Downs Grammar School where he acted in school productions. He accepted a grant to study at the London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. After two unhappy years he left his studies. In 1949 Pinter was fined by magistrates for having as a conscientious objector refused to do his national service. "I could have gone to prison - I took my toothbrush to the trials - but it so happened that the magistrate was slightly sympathetic, so I was fined instead, thirty pounds in all. Perhaps I'll be called up again in the next war, but I won't go." (from Playwrights at Work)
In 1950 Pinter started to publish poems in Poetry (London) under the name Harold Pinta. He worked as a bit-part actor on a BBC Radio program, Focus on Football Pools. He studied for a short time at the Central School of Speech and Drama and toured Ireland from 1951 to 1952. In 1953 he appeared during Donald Wolfit's 1953 season at the King's Theatre in Hammersmith. After four more years in provincial repertory theatre under the pseudonym David Baron, Pinter began to write for the stage. THE ROOM (1957), originally written for Bristol University's drama department, was finished in four days. A SLIGHT ACHE, Pinter's first radio piece, was broadcast on the BBC in 1959. His first full-length play, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, was produced in 1958 in the West End.

The play, which closed with disastrous reviews after one week, dealt in a Kafkaeque manner with an apparently ordinary man who is threatened by strangers for an unknown reason. He tries to run away but is tracked down. Although most reviewers were hostile, Pinter produced in rapid succession the body of work which made him the master of 'the comedy of menance.'
"Pinter's dialogue is as tightly - perhaps more tightly - controlled than verse. Every syllable, every inflection, the succession of long and short sounds, words and sentences, is calculated to nicety. And precisely the repetitiousness, the discontinuity, the circularity of ordinary vernacular speech are here used as formal elements with which the poet can compose his linguistic ballet." (Martin Esslin in The People Wound, 1970)
Pinter's major plays are usually set in a single room, whose occupants are threatened by forces or people whose precise intentions neither the characters nor the audience can define. Usually his characters are engaged in a struggle for survival or identity. Pinter refuses to provide rational justifications for action, but offers existential glimpses of bizarre or terrible moments in people's lives. In MONOLOGUE (1973) and NO MAN'S LAND (1975) the characters use words as their weapons in their struggles, not only for survival but also for sanity. ASTON - You said you wanted me to get you up. DAVIES - What for?
ASTON - You said you were thinking of going to Sidcup. DAVIES - Ay, that'd be a good thing, if I got there. ASTON - Doesn't look like much of a day. DAVIES - Ay, well, that's shot it, en't it?
(from The Caretaker)
In 1960 Pinter wrote THE DUMB WAITER. With his second full-length play, THE CARETAKER (1960), Pinter made his reputation as a major modern talent. It was followed by A SLIGHT ACHE (1961), THE COLLECTION (1962), THE DWARFS (1963), THE LOVER (1963) and THE HOMECOMING (1965), the story of an estranged son who brings his wife home to meet his family, perhaps the most enigmatic of all his works. It won a Tony Award, the Whitebread Anglo-American Theater Award, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Although Pinter has told in an interview in 1966, that he never has written any part for any actor, his wife Vivien Merchant, frequently appeared in his plays. In the 1960s he also directed several of his dramas. After BETRAYAL (1978) Pinter wrote no new full-length plays until MOONLIGHT (1994). Short plays include A KIND OF ALASKA (1982), inspired by the case histories in Oliver Sack's Awakenings (1973).

The Homecoming (1965) - After teaching philosophy at an American university for six years, Teddy brings his wife Ruth home to London to meet his family: his father Max, a nagging, aggressive ex-butcher and other member of the all-male household. At the end Teddy returns alone to his university job in America. No one needs him and he needs no one. Ruth stays as a mother or whore to his family. Everyone needs her. - Similar motifs - the battle for domination in a sexual context - recur in Landscape and Silence (both 1969), and In Old Times (1971)
Several of Pinter's plays were originally written for British radio or TV. From the 1970s Pinter have directed a number of stage plays and the American Film Theatre production of Butler (1974). In 1977 he published a screenplay based on Marcel Proust's A la Recherche du Temps perdu. Closely associated with the director Peter Hall (1930-), he became an associate director of the National Theatre after Hall was nominated as the successor of Lawrence Olivier. Pinter has received many awards, including Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear in 1963, BAFTA awards in 1965 and in 1971, the Hamburg Shakespeare Prize in 1970, the Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or in 1971, and the Commonwealth Award in 1981. He was made CBE in 1966 and in 1996 he was given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime's achievement in theatre. Pinter was married to the actress Vivien Merchant. They divorced in 1981. In the same years Pinter married the biographer Lady Antonia Fraser. Pinter has written a number of screenplays, including The Servant (1963), The Accident (1967), The Go-Between (1971), The Last Tycoon (1974, dir. by Elia Kazan), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981, novel by John Fowles), Betrayal (1982), Turtle Diary (1985), Reunion (1989), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), The Comfort of Strangers (1990), and The Trial by Franz Kafka (1990). In the 1990s Pinter became more active as a director than as a playwright. He oversaw David Mamet's Oleanna and several works by Simon Gray. For further reading: Kafka and Pinter by Raymond Armstrong (1999); The Life and Work of Harold Pinter by Michael Billington (1997); Harold Pinter and the New British Theatre by D. Keith Peacock (1997); Harold Pinter: A Question of Timing by Martin S. Regal (1995); The Pinter Ethic by Penelope Prentice (1994); Harold Pinter and the Language of Cultural Power by Marc Silverstein (1993); Harold Pinter by Chittanranjan Misra (1993); Critical Essays on Harold Pinter by Steven H. Gale (1990); Pinter in Play by Susan Hollis Merritt (1990); Harold Pinter by Volker Strunk (1989); Pinter's Female Portraits by Elizabeth Sakellaridou (1988); Harold Pinter, ed. by Stephen H.

Gale (1986); Making Pictures by Joanne Klein (1985); Harold Pinter, ed. by Alan Bold (1985); The Dream Structure of Pinter's Plays by Lucina Paquet Gabard (1977); Harold Pinter by R. Hayman (1975); The Dramatic World of Harold Pinter by Jatherine H. Burkman (1971); Harold Pinter by W. Kerr (1968); Harold Pinter by W. Baker and S.E. Tabachnik (1973); Theatre and Anti-Theatre by R. Hayman (1979); The Peopled Wound by Martin Esslin (1970); Anger and After by J.R. Taylor (1969) - see also The Pinter Review, ed. by Francis X. Gillen, Steven H- Gale
Selected works:
· The Room, 1957 - suom. Huone
· The Birthday Party, 1957 - suom. Syntymäpäiväjuhla
· The Birthday Party, 1958
· Pieces of Eight, 1959
· The Caretaker, 1959 - suom. Talonmies - film 1963, dir. by Clive Donner, starring Alan Bates, Robert Shaw, Donald Pleasence - Two brothers, Aston and Mick, invite a revolting tramp, Mac, to share their attic. · The Dumb Waiter, 1960
· A Night Out, 1960
· The Dwarfs, 1960 (from his novel)
· Night School, 1961
· The Collection, 1961
· One To Another, 1961 (with J. Mortimer, N.F. Simpson)
· A Slight Ache and Other Plays, 1961
· The Pumpkin Eaters, 1963
· The Lover, 1963
· The Servant, 1963 (from R. Maugham's novel)
· The Pumpkin Eater, 1964 (from P. Mortimer's novel)
· The Homecoming, 1965 - suom. Kotiinpaluu
· Tea Party, 1965
· The Quiller Memorandum, 1966 (from Adam Hall's The Berlin Memorandum)
· The Party and Other Plays, 1967
· Accident, 1967 (from N. Mosley's novel)
· New Poems, 1997 (ed.)
· a PEN Anthology, 1967 (ed. with J. Fuller, P. Redgrave)
· Poems, 1968
· Mac, 1968
· Landscape, 1968
· Silence, 1969
· Night, 1969
· Old Times, 1971
· The Go-Between, 1971 (from L.P. Hartley's novel)
· Monologue, 1973
· The Proust Screenplay, 1977 (with B.Bray, J. Losey)
· No Man's Land, 1975 - suom. Ei kenenkään maa
· The Last Tycoon, 1976 (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel)
· Betrayal, 1978 - suom. Petos
· Poems and Prose 1941-1977, 1978
· Langrishe, Go Dowm, 1978 (from A. Higgins)
· I Know thew Place, 1979
· The Hothouse, 1980
· Family Voices, 1981
· The French Lieutenant's Woman, 1981 (from J. Fowles's novel)
· A Kind of Alaska, 1982
· The French Lieutenant's Woman and Other Screenplays, 1982
· Other Places, 1982
· Victoria Station, 1982
· The Big One, 1983
· Players, 1983
· One for the Road, 1984
· Players, 1985
· Turtle Diary, 1985 (from R.Hoban)
· 100 Poems by 100 Poets, 1986 (ed. with A. Astbury, G.

Godbert)
· Mountain Language, 1988
· Heat of the Day, 1989 (from E. Bowen's novel)
· Reunion, 1989 (from F. Uhlman)
· The Comfort of Strangers and Other Screenplays, 1990
· The Comfort of Strangers, 1990 (from I. McEwan's novel)
· Victory, 1990 (from J. Conrad's novel)
· The Handmaid's Tale, 1990 (from M. Atwood's novel)
· The Dwarfs, 1990
· Complete Works, 1990
· Party Time, 1991
· Plays, 1991
· The Trial, 1991 (from F. Kafka's novel)
· Ten Early Poems, 1992
· Moonlight, 1993
· Pinter At Sixty, 1993 (ed. by K.H. Burkman, J.L. Kundert-Gibbs)
· 99 Poems in Translation, 1994 (ed. with A. Astbury, G.Godbert)
· Party Time, 1994
· Ashes to Ashes, 1996
· Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-1998, 1999
· Collected Screenplays 1-2, 2000
Celebration & The Room, 2000.