Friday, January 9, 2009

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, who has died at the age of 78, was the most influential, provocative and poetic dramatist of his generation. He enjoyed parallel careers as actor, screenwriter and director and was also, especially in recent years, a vigorous political polemicist campaigning against abuses of human rights. But it is for his plays that he will be best remembered and for his ability to create dramatic poetry out of everyday speech. Among the dramatists of the last century, Beckett is his only serious rival in terms of theatrical influence; and it is a measure of Pinter's power that early on in his career he spawned the adjective "Pinteresque" suggesting a cryptically mysterious situation imbued with hidden menace.


To read the full obituary click below:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/dec/25/pinter-theatre

And for Pinter's inspiring Nobel Lecture on video and downloadable pdf, see the following link:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html