So long, Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter had one of those deep, dark provocative minds, the scary kind, and he used it to create characters that resembled almost exactly the furtive and often malign creatures that burrow around inside our heads and heart, alternately bullying us and cringing in the corner. I’m thinking of early Pinter here, the Pinter of The Caretaker, The Homecoming and The Birthday Party, plays written between 1957 and 1964 that Portland theaters still occasionally produce. Which makes sense, because there’s really nothing quite like them, the plays that gave us the “Pinter silence” — the tear in the fabric, the hole in the dike. Except for Betrayal, I don’t know the rest of his work nearly as well, and I only know Betrayal because of the excellent film version, adapted by Pinter and starring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Hodge. It has a wistful tone, maybe it’s the score, that takes some of the sting out.
Back to Pinter, who died on December 24, having fought cancer since 2001. As his playwriting career began to wind down, he became more and more political, and his Nobel acceptance speech in 2005 excoriates the role America has played in the world, that record of supporting dictators and expanding our economic interests, and the consistent support Britain provided for our “adventures”, including Iraq.
We leave you with that 46 minute speech, or rather with a link. It circulated widely after he delivered it — by turns angry and bitter, the notes of a man betrayed. But if you didn’t hear it then, maybe it’s a fitting way to see him off today.
December 26th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
And so long Eartha Kitt, not the towering Nobel prizewinning writer that Pinter was, but a great artist nevertheless who also used her art to make a political protest. She spoke up against the Vietnam war when invited to sing at the White House by LBJ, carrying a different kind of torch.
December 26th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
I saw that, and I remember the White House protest… which unites her with Pinter, I suppose.
December 27th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Here’s one account of the encounter, taken from The Swamp (http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/12/eartha_kitts_versus_the_lbjs.html):
When President Johnson entered the room, Kitt confronted him, “Mr. President, what do you do about delinquent parents, those who have to work and are too busy to look after their children?” He told her that Social Security legislation was just passed that provided millions of dollars for daycare centers. Kitt was not pleased but Johnson told her those were issues for the women to discuss at the lunch.
During the question period, Kitt stood up and confronted Lady Bird, “Boys I know across the nation feel it doesn’t pay to be a good guy.” She moved into (sic) closer to the First Lady and said that boys don’t want to behave for fear of being sent to Vietnam saying, “You are a mother too though you have had daughters and not sons. I am a mother and I know the feeling of having a baby come out of my guts. I have a baby and then you send him off to war. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot. And Mrs. Johnson, in case you don’t understand the lingo, that’s marijuana.
December 27th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Thanks Mead for the account. I saw part of an interview Gwen Ifill did with Kitt last year aired on the Lehrer report last night and Kitt said something about being an artist, or anything actually, that’s worth remembering: don’t do what you do for the money (I’m paraphrasing here), do whatever you do best, whatever you love best. I might add it was pointed out in the report that after Kitt confronted the Johnsons she couldn’t get work here, tv and movie gigs dried up, so for several years she worked abroad, another historical comment on the abrogation of free speech.
December 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I just posted above on Ms. Kitt. Please feel free to add!