Mean People Suck.
Harold Pinter was announced as the winner of the Nobel for Lit this morning.
This is from the Beeb's online feed:
"Pinter, 75, whose plays include The Birthday Party and Betrayal, was announced as the winner of the $1.3m (£723,000) cash prize on Thursday.
"The Nobel academy said Pinter's work 'uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms'.
"Pinter is widely regarded as the UK's greatest living playwright."
I hate Pinter.
I have always hated Pinter, to the point that I can't even tell you which plays I force-fed myself in college when I kept reading that he stripped away the pretense and bared the human soul. From what I read, Pinter thinks-- call it that-- that people are essentially mean-spirited and deserve comeuppancee above all else. The monsters he drew, however, bear little resemblance to the vast majority of people I know, and believe me, I am no Pollyanna. Most people are transparent to me, I see right through them; their faults are thrown into sharp relief. This includes Pinter. He realized, early on, that he could make name and reputation out of cruelty humor cast as intellectual investigation. He wrote the Dallas of theater.
He also tried to cast America as the Fourth Reich. Schmuck. Doesn't he know our President is a dumbass? His shady operative shitheads? The corridors of power currently filled with fluffernutters who couldn't find their assholes with both hands? Harry should learn to think before he writes. Fourth Reich my ass.
Hell, Harry ought to learn to think. Makes me wish Sartre were still around.
This is from the Beeb's online feed:
"Pinter, 75, whose plays include The Birthday Party and Betrayal, was announced as the winner of the $1.3m (£723,000) cash prize on Thursday.
"The Nobel academy said Pinter's work 'uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms'.
"Pinter is widely regarded as the UK's greatest living playwright."
I hate Pinter.
I have always hated Pinter, to the point that I can't even tell you which plays I force-fed myself in college when I kept reading that he stripped away the pretense and bared the human soul. From what I read, Pinter thinks-- call it that-- that people are essentially mean-spirited and deserve comeuppancee above all else. The monsters he drew, however, bear little resemblance to the vast majority of people I know, and believe me, I am no Pollyanna. Most people are transparent to me, I see right through them; their faults are thrown into sharp relief. This includes Pinter. He realized, early on, that he could make name and reputation out of cruelty humor cast as intellectual investigation. He wrote the Dallas of theater.
He also tried to cast America as the Fourth Reich. Schmuck. Doesn't he know our President is a dumbass? His shady operative shitheads? The corridors of power currently filled with fluffernutters who couldn't find their assholes with both hands? Harry should learn to think before he writes. Fourth Reich my ass.
Hell, Harry ought to learn to think. Makes me wish Sartre were still around.
posted by Bobo the Wandering Pallbearer at 8:17 AM
2 Comments:
The important thing is that you are not bitter.
:)
I love Harold Pinter. I thoroughly enjoyed the unravelling of viciousness in The Betrayal, and it's delightful to work out exactly what the hell he means by The Room and The Dumbwaiter. I think it's a matter of what you think he's doing. I don't think he's probing the psychology of actual people; I think he's being surrealistic, and blowing everything ridiculously out of proportion. The goal of this behavior, of course, is to get people who have no idea what he's doing to say, "Ah, Pinter! A genius!"
That said, the most recent work of his I know is from the 70s, when I believe he stopped writing. Oops! No, he didn't. And that's what seems to be the function of the Nobel for literature: to honor people who can't write any more.
Post a Comment
<< Home