Harold Pinter Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 13, 2005
Filed at 8:17 a.m. ET
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- British playwright Harold Pinter, who
juxtaposed the brutal and the banal in such works as ''The Caretaker''
and ''The Birthday Party'' and made an art form out of spare language
and unbearable silence, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday.
The Swedish Academy said the 75-year-old Pinter was an author ''who in
his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry
into oppression's closed rooms.'' The chilling, understated style of his
work even inspired an adjective all his own: Pinteresque.
Starting with his breakthrough play, ''The Caretaker,'' Pinter codified a
style in the 1950s and '60s of verbal evasion and violence, menace both
spoken and not. His influence has been felt throughout British literature,
and across the ocean in the work of American playwrights Sam Shepard and
David Mamet.
''Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and
unpredictable dialogue where people are at the mercy of each other and
pretense crumbles,'' the academy said.
His other works include ''The Room'' and ''The Dumb Waiter.''
One of the most influential British playwrights of his generation, Pinter
in recent years he has turned his acerbic eye on the United States and
the war in Iraq.
He has been an outspoken critic of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
vehemently opposed Britain's involvement in the war. He told the BBC in
an interview in February that that he would continue writing poems but
was taking a break from plays.
''My energies are going in different directions, certainly into poetry,''
he said.
In 2003, Pinter published a volume of anti-war poetry about the Iraq
conflict, and in 2004 he joined a group of celebrity campaigners calling
for Blair to be impeached.
''I'm using a lot of energy more specifically about political states of
affairs, which I think are very, very worrying as things stand,'' he said.
Pinter has also written screenplays, including ''The French Lieutenant's
Woman'' in 1981 from the John Fowles novel, as well as ''The Accident,''
''The Servant'' and ''The Go-Between.''
Pinter is the first Briton to win the literature award since V.S. Naipaul
won it in 2001.
The son of a Jewish dressmaker, Pinter was born in London on Oct. 10, 1930.
Pinter has said his encounters with anti-Semitism in his youth influenced
him in becoming a dramatist. The wartime bombing of London also affected
him deeply, the academy said.
The academy's announcement came on Yom Kippur, Judaism's most important
holiday.
Most prolific between 1957 and 1965, Pinter relished the juxtaposition
of brutality and the banal and turned the conversational pause into an
emotional minefield.
His characters' internal fears and longings, their guilt and difficult
sexual drives are set against the neat lives they have constructed in
order to try to survive.
Usually enclosed in one room, they organize their lives as a sort of grim
game and their actions often contradict their words. Gradually, the layers
are peeled back to reveal the characters' nakedness.
Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl said Pinter was overwhelmed
when told he had won the prize.
''He did not say many words, in fact he was very happy,'' he said.
Last year's winner was Austrian feminist Elfriede Jelinek. Her selection
drew such ire that a member of the academy publicly blasted his colleagues
for picking her. Knut Ahnlund, 82, who has not played an active role in
the academy since 1996, resigned Tuesday after he wrote in a signed
newspaper article that picking Jelinek had caused ''irreparable damage''
to the award's reputation.
The academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III to advance the Swedish
language and its literature, has handed out the literature prize since
1901. To date 102 men and women have received the prize, including France's
Jean-Paul Sartre, who declined the 1964 prize.
http://nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Nobel-Literature.html?hp&ex=1129262400&en=7b2f3c1b8798ab51&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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