Harold Pinter Does Not Deserve the Post Mortem White-Washing He Is About to Receive

And so. Pinter. Has. Died. Without the trademark pause, there will now be a torrent of praise for the departed playwright. But in the fawning, the more interesting - and bleak - questions about Harold Pinter will be lost.

How did the world's leading literary prize, the Nobel, go to a man whose most recent works include this: "We blew the shit right back up their own ass/ And out their fucking ears./ It works. / We blew the shit out of them,/ They suffocated in their own shit!/ We blew them into fucking shit./ They are eating it./ Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth"?

And - more importantly - how did a young Jewish boy who grew up bravely fighting against gangs of Mosleyite fascists on the streets of the East End wind up as a patron of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic?

There are two arguments against Pinter - one literary, the other political - and they are both hard to make, because in amongst the screw-ups Pinter has some undeniable achievements. Harold Pinter has one literary accomplishment: he imported the surrealism of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Luis Bunel into the staid English theatre. As the critic Irving Wardle put it, in his first play 'The Birthday Party', Pinter showed "how a banal Blackpool boarding house could open up to the horrors of modern history." The play shows a man, Stanley, hiding out in a dank Blackpool boarding house, only for two torturers to track him down. His landlady, Meg, is oblivious to the violence smashing through her own home. At their best, his plays are like a nightmarish stress-dream: unbearably primal, raw expressions of menace and fear, whose meaning is always just beyond our grasp.

But with Samuel Beckett, you always know there is an elaborate existentialist philosophy underneath the darkness and chaos. With Pinter, if you turn on the light and switch off the atmospherics, you find... nothing, except a few commonplace insights: Torture is Bad and Resistance is Good. Pinter himself says "the most important line I've ever written" is when Meg's husband calls out, as Stanley is taken away, "Stan, don't let them tell you what to do." The playwright said of this unobjectionable, obvious platitude, "I've lived that line all my damn life. Never more than now." It's depressingly revealing: Pinter's staccato sinisterness does not illustrate a point; it distracts the audience from the fact his point is so banal.

Yet Pinter has been protected by an elderly critical establishment so invested in creating and building up his reputation that they cannot admit how feeble most of his plays now look. (I assume nobody at all takes the poetry seriously). When I saw 'The Homecoming' - a revoltingly misogynistic work - in the West End a few years ago, the audience kept laughing in all the wrong places. It literally looked ridiculous, yet it was given respectful - and in some cases fawning - write-ups.

But the more important case against Pinter is political. Ever since Pinter was a teenager, he was relentlessly contrarian, kicking out violently against anything that might trigger his rage that day. He claimed to be a man of the left, but a few wildcat strikes at the National Theatre were enough to make him vote for Margaret Thatcher. He had an extraordinarily patronizing attitude to the poor, illustrated in an anecdote in Michael Billington's biography. Pinter once bumped into the tramp he had used as a model for the central character in his play 'The Caretaker' on Chiswick roundabout. "We had a chat and I asked him how he was getting on. I didn't mention the play, because he wouldn't have known what a play was," he said. Pinter did not mention that he had made millions of pounds by using this man as an inspiration. No: instead he noted to himself, "I was very close to this old derelict's world, in a way." His reason for comparing himself to a homeless person? When he was a student at RADA, he would skive off (because it was "full of poofs and ponces") and wander the streets "like a tramp." Yes Harold, just like a tramp.

Pinter often fumed about tyranny, but equally fumed about people who resisted it. During the Second World War, Pinter called the British Army uniform "a shit-suit" (his talk was filled with faeces) and during the war against the Nazis he declared, "I am never going to put a shit-suit on for anyone." Just a few years later, Europe was being threatened to the East by a Stalinist tyranny that had already murdered 30 million people, and the Labour left - led by Nye Bevan - was (rightly) supporting the airlifts to occupied Berlin. But Pinter called this "ridiculous". When he was called up for army service, he became a conscientious objector, deriding the people backing free Berlin as "fools."

Yet Pinter cannot be dismissed as politically worthless: his is a story with many greys. Sometimes his fickle rage was directed against targets who really deserve it, and Pinter behaved with ramshackle heroism. In 1979, he traveled to Nicaragua to back the democratic, socialist Sandinistas against the US-backed fascist guerrillas who were besieging the country. In 1985, he spent five days in Turkey - as international President of PEN - where he met with dissidents, and spoke out against torture and state-backed murder. Not many Western intellectuals put themselves at risk like this.

The tragedy of Pinter's politics is that he took a desirable political value - hatred of war, or distrust for his own government - and absolutizes it. It is good to hate war, but to take this so far that you will not resist Hitler and Stalin is absurd. It is good to oppose the crimes of your own government - but to take this so far that you end up serving on the Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic is bizarre.

When Serbian nationalism - stoked and stroked by Milosevic - began to ravage the Balkans in the 1990s, Pinter's response was simple and visceral: whatever the US and UK governments are for, I'm against. Blair and Clinton are condemning Milosevic? Right, sign me up for the defense. The Committee he sat on right up to Miolsevic's death - headed by Jared Israel, a friend of Milosevic - was not simply calling for the Serb to be given a fair trial, a demand all reasonable people supported. It called for Milosevic to be released on the grounds that he was not guilty. In fact, the website bragging Pinter's signature describes him as a "the strongest pillar of peace and stability in this region."

So when there was ethnic cleansing two days' drive from Auschwitz, Pinter's response was to defend the aggressor and attack the victims. While much of the left - good people like Peter Tatchell, Michael Foot and Susan Sontag - were calling for democratic countries to arm the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to defend the ethnic Albanians from racist murder, Pinter described the KLA as "a bandit organisation" that was "actually" responsible for the ethnic cleansing in the region. Watching the trial, Pinter said admiringly, "Milosevic is giving them a run for their money."

Human Rights Watch - and others who know something about the Balkans - responded to Pinter's position with horror. Its director, Richard Dicker, said at the time of the trial, "This is not victors' justice - this is justice for the victims of horrific crimes. Slobodan Milosvic was at the top of the chain of command of military and security forces that wrought mayhem in Kosovo in early 1999." Pinter repeatedly said the "real" crimes began after the NATO bombing campaign, but most of the crimes Milosevic was charged with were committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. To give just one example, in November 1994, Dzenana Soklovic, 31, and her seven year old son were walking in woods near Sarajevo. A bullet passed through Dzenana and hit her son in the head, killing him. The closest Pinter has ever come to condemning the man responsible is this grudging concession: "I am absolutely not saying that Milosevic might not be responsible for all sorts of atrocities but I believe what's been left out of public debate is that there was a civil war going on down there. Actually." I once tried to discuss his defence of Milosevic with him and he began to scream - literally scream - at me.

Goodbye. Harold. Pinter. You shouldn't. Have defended. Milosevic. (Stage directions: Off-stage, there are howls and screams of rage. We do not know if these are from ethnic Albanians murdered by Milosevic, or from Pinter himself.)

Johann hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. To read more of his articles, click here.

Comments

[bubbuh]

No Nobel for Hari.

[rudyinbama]

Before totally trashing old Harold, may be worth reading what is happening in Bosnia today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27islam.html?ref=world

[vanderleun]

"Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques."

[AliMB]

Harold Pinter may have been a great writer, but he was also a quintessential representative of the anti-american vanguard; anti-american to the bone, and proudly so. His acceptance speech for his 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature was truly a spectacle to observe. As Gwynne Dyer, himself a leftist acadmic and journalist (or progressive, as has become popular) described, it was "one of the last great anti-american rants". Whether Mr. Pinter deserves a white-washing is a matter of opinion, but I feel that if he were around to see it he could care less.

[Virginia M. Moncrieff - Huffpost Blogger]

I recall the Pinter/Milosevic era and was utterly gobsmacked about it then and remain so. Nothing could justify a defense of what was going on in the Balkans and a "moral" objection to the war was not a moral objection at all.

I think the deifying of people when they die is the ultimate theatre of the absurd - some people's flaws are large and tragic, others are minor but no one is a saint and painting Pinter as the ultimate humanitarian and a great pacifist in a world gone wrong, is just muddle headed.

[TheodoricOfYork]

I remember my hometown newspaper, the (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, angrily opposing Clinton's actions against the Milosevic regime in language that would've made Pinter proud. The paper's editorial page was then (c. 1998) run by a far-right loon who later lost his job in part for plagiarizing material from a far right website and a mini-scandal over his perusal of Internet porn on the job. One unsigned editorial asked what all the fuss was over ethnic cleansing was all about. After all, the T-U reasoned, didn't the US military's actions in ending Japanese occupation of much of the Pacific during World War II also amount to "ethnic cleansing"? Needless to say, as the son of a WWII US Navy veteran, I found this highly offensive.

Pinter is a notable figure in 20th century British theatre and literature, but his defense of Milosevic was inexcusable.

[AllenConnors]

For $3, you can read the best analysis of Pinter's work here:

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/rattiganpinter-dalrymple-2306

The summary of his contribution to theater: "a coarsening of sensibility, the triumph of irrationalism, a scepticism about the ability of the human mind to order experience, a loss of faith in the ability of language to deliver meaning, a belief that only relations of power are real and all else is illusion, a slide into intellectual dishonesty and attitudinizing, and a tolerance of psychopathy."

[theretrograde]

You can read an obituary from Peter Kennard, the British artist and friend of Harold Pinter, here:

http://www.thecommentfactory.com/peter-kennard-remembers-his-friend-harold-pinter/

[Javani]

"Pinter often fumed about tyranny, but equally fumed about people who resisted it."

Nothing unusual there. Standard Western Marxist and fellow traveler discourse.

[djork]

Beautifully stated. Thank you. The act of dying does not in itself ennoble one.

[daedelus]

No, but a lifetime of creating art does.

[rektruax]

No it doesn't...

[Renton2000]

Yes, Pinter's defense of Milosevic was pretty stupid. But to deny his contribution to the art of theatrical drama is pretty absurd.

[FearlessFreep]

It takes courage to be a Conscientious Objector, even in a just war. (ESPECIALLY in a just war!)

[JulieSA]

Pinter was an objector of the Berlin Airlift. Which fed starving people and kept them free. There's nothing courageous about that.

[florestanchi]

I believe Mr. Hari is quite justified in vetting his misgivings about Pinter's literary and political legacy so close to his death. The rectitude of white-washing the legacy of prominent political and artistic luminaries in the interests of honoring their memories is not based on morality, but psychology.

When William Rehnquist died, Alan Dershowitz was quite right to lambaste the media and the public at large for assiduously caressing his memory despite the fact that much of his behavior and his values were downright contemptible. I believe he said something along the lines of "who the hell are they talking about?"

A similar phenomenon occurred when Reagan died. As the media and the public extolled his "smile and all the word smiles with you" je ne sais quoi, they ignored the fact that his administration committed impeachable offense(s) by defying an act of Congress.

All these gripes along "have you no respect for the dead?" lines essentially reject the notion that history should, at very least, prove instructive to those who study it. Whether Pinter was as deeply flawed as Mr. Hari contends is certainly open to debate. That said, Pinter is hardly worthy of unqualified adulation, and I commend Mr. Hari for breaking the silence.

[gnorrfa]

isn't this whole thing subjective? do we run on rails? i have seen the most insane, ludicrous junk awarded tonies, academy awards, etc., etc. but. that's my opinion.
if we discovered papers clearly linking shakespere with child pornography, his wealth of literature is without merit? deplore the "man" but leave his "work" for others to judge.

[TheodoricOfYork]

Maybe the better, and not at all hypothetical, comparison is with Shaw. Shaw was a hell of a playwright, probably the greatest since Shakespeare. But Shaw - the same man who wrote masterpieces like "Pygmalion" and "Major Barbara" - laughed off famines in Stalinist Russia and had real sympathy, if not out and out admiration, for "supermen" like Stalin and Hitler. GBS was a giant of Western literature, but dear God, much of his political outlook stunk to high heaven.

[bubbuh]

You both have it right. The comparison with Shaw is especially apt. Writers, playwrights and poets in particular, make very poor political philosophers.

[IncredulousGeezer]

Why do I have the feeling that this is another example of a pygmy blowing his poison darts at a giant of the literary establishment?
Differ you might with Pinter's political views, but his reputation as one of the leading playwrights of the XXth Century is undeniable.

Perhaps in time, Hari will regret this screed gratuitously demeaning Pinter the way he's regretted his initial support of the Iraq invasion and war.

[TheWanderer]

I quite agree; it seems the author of this piece can't distinguish between his dislike for Pinter's politics and his dislike for Pinter's plays. I wonder if Hari is even vaguely aware that many of our best poets, musicians,­playwright­s, authors and directors are thoroughly unpleasant, egotistical jerks with all sorts of disturbing opinions and views.

[MX]

My thoughts exactly.

RIP Harold Pinter - and thank you for all your tireless work towards peace and justice. The speech you delivered on receiving your Nobel prize was the most insightful and articulate analysis of the brutality of American/British imperialism that perhaps there has ever been. And your intense anger and passion that accompanied this analysis spoke to so many of us around the world who have been so completely horrified, disturbed and outraged by the mass slaughter and unimaginable carnage that has taken place before our eyes over the last few years.

God bless you Harold Pinter - you will be sorely missed.

[OrganOfThought]

He will never regret his support of the invasion. His type doesn't do that.

[motleystu]

even if the accusations are true - and i'm really not sure Pinter's views are well-represented here - isn't this piece a case of doctrinaire, one-strike­-and-you'r­e-out politics? it's hardly an example of the nuanced thought it claims Pinter lacked.

And Beckett's got a (terribly important?) elaborate 'existentialist' philosophy underneath all the (needless?) art? I thought he said somewhere, 'I'm not an intellectual. I'm pure feeling'. I wonder what that means? O, who cares? thinking's boring and chocs are tasty. Yummers!

God, polemic can be tedious.