Be on the left, it seems. The NYT all but comes out and says it in its article on Harold Pinter today:
The playwright, known in recent years as much for his fiery anti-Americanism as for his spare prose style and haunting, elliptical plays like “The Caretaker” and “The Homecoming,” was awarded the $1.3 million Nobel literature prize in October. In its citation, the Swedish Academy made little mention of his political views, saying only that he is known as a “fighter for human rights” whose stands are often “seen as controversial.” It mostly focused on his work, saying that Mr. Pinter “uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.”
The literature prize has in recent years often gone to writers with left-wing ideologies. These include the European writers José Saramago of Portugal, Gunter Grass of Germany and Dario Fo of Italy.
Good thing Saul Bellow got his back in 1976. He might not have stood much of a chance in recent years.
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17 Comments
1. wdqwdq:thank you for your entry
Dec 8, 2005 - 11:03 pm 2. wdqwdq:thank you for your entrycasting
Dec 8, 2005 - 11:05 pm 3. monkyboy:He hates us! He really hates us!
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1661516,00.html?gusrc=rss
I will have to chuck out my “Quiller Memorandum” DVD in protest.
Dec 9, 2005 - 3:20 am 4. Terrye:I saw part of this man’s little speech and he does really hate us.
All of us.
He is a nonpartisan American hater.
He goes back 50 years in his antiAmericanism. That includes Saint Bill and Preacher Jimmy.
Just another caviar socialist who loves Salin and Castro.
Dec 9, 2005 - 4:27 am 5. markus:It was an interesting, articulate speech. Most Americans, if they saw it, wouldn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. It was also ripe for fisking, and counterpoint. As it is, that won’t happen. Few in America will bother to read it, while few anti-american Europeans will subject its assertions to scrutity.
Dec 9, 2005 - 5:16 am 6. Andres Kupfer:Quick question: who, outside the English-speaking world, would be talking about the Nobel Prize of literature if the choice of laureate had not been tainted with liberal left politics?
Newspapers the world over are today talking about Pinter’s acceptance speach. The Swedish Academy has achieved a penetration that no marketing director would dare to imagine.
The product? Vitriolic criticism of US foreign policy. The medium? The most unlikely: literature. The secret of the campaign? The choice of an English-speaking laureate: now the English-speaking world is talking about the Swedish Academy’s product and the rest of the world follows (imagine the response of the world’s media if the laureate was from Ghana and couldn’t articulate a sentence in English).
Best,
Andres
Dec 9, 2005 - 5:41 am 7. markus:Andres — anti-Americans sells like hotcakes. Largely, though not entirely, thanks to Bush.
Dec 9, 2005 - 5:53 am 8. Peter G.:Pinter’s speech was interesting, mainly because it starts out with some thoughtful analysis of language and then descends into anti-American hysteria and stupidity. Just like his career.
I could have written the latter half of his speech when I was 20. I couldn’t do it anymore, and not because I lost the muse.
Dec 9, 2005 - 6:10 am 9. beautifulatrocities:Tehran University Students reply to Mr Pinter
Dec 9, 2005 - 7:50 am 10. scribe10:From Pinter’s speech:
“In 1958 I wrote the following:
‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?”
No distinction between what is real and what is unreal. Sounds like he either learned his craft in a Totalitarian setting, or he is deranged.
Two questions for Pinter:
1) If a statement can be true and false at the same time, does that mean that people like Irving and the President of Iran who say the Holocaust didn’t happen are each saying true things as well as false things?
2) What kind of justice system can one have in a Pinter like world?
Dec 9, 2005 - 7:54 am 11. ForNow:No question about it, folks like Pinter, fanciers of Rorty’s verbiage about replacing “truth” with “warranted assertion” have been backing off their anti-truth chants and rationalizations of dishonesty.
Dem in the White House ==> Quoth Dem brain herd: “There is no truth.”
Repub in the White House ==> Quoth the Dem brain herd: “There is truth.”
Dec 9, 2005 - 10:35 am 12. Cosmo:Now we know why Jimmy Carter got the prize, and why Bill Clinton is trying so hard to get it.
Dec 9, 2005 - 10:49 am 13. exmaple:Friends, I think you got Pinter wrong. It’s satire. He writes:
“Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.”
After this lesson he launches into his sermonizing, un-objective anti-American screed. Hence, he’s signaling we read should read it as political satire.
He’s satirizing himself.
.
.
.
Or his mind is so addled he doesn’t realize it!
Dec 9, 2005 - 11:17 am 14. ForNow:Oh, well, I was never a Saul Bellow fan anyway. Edward Dahlberg (July 22 1900 — Feb. 28, 1977) should have been awarded a Nobel. He’s the American ex-communist turned basically anti-political, who said: “It is not the state, but the people that wither away.”
Dec 9, 2005 - 12:40 pm 15. Kevin Peters:Roger:
I love the ‘of course the record of the Soviet Union has been talked to death, lets look at the U.S. since the topic is so underexamined’ (my paraphrase). As if someone could not find thousands of anti-american rants exactly like Pinter’s from the last 5 decades and that they dwarf the examinations of the Soviet Union that Pinter claims are so overdone. “oh, they banned the death penalty. they had set up a humane form of government.” Go back to the defenders of Stalin, Mao, Castro,Pol Pot, Kim, and every other Communist totalitarian dungeon and you can find the same tired defenses of those governments coming out of the free west and then when the ugly facts come out the defenders use the ‘Well, if the U.S. had engaged these tyrants instead of confronting these “champions of the people” they wouldn’t have felt the need to take away all of the human rights of their population” rant.
The mistakes made by the U.S. during the cold war have been examined and some were atrocious. “The Forty year Wound” is a fine balanced look at the mistakes that were made by the U.S. that doesn’t ignore the fact that the Soviet Union was intent on World domination and they didn’t let the people they wanted to save decide their own fate and that once they were under their control they didn’t have the chance to change their minds. For Pinter to claim that he is shining a light on unexamined historical facts is laughable. I used to spout that Sandanista agit prop in my foaming at the mouth “Reagan is the stupidist and the most evil president in the History of the world and he is going to start WWIII and he is like Hitler,and he hates people of color, and he is an Imperliastic Fascist” days. I grew up. Pinter still thinks it is the 60’s and that the Revolution will still come about. What tripe.
Dec 9, 2005 - 7:46 pm 16. Kevin Peters:Roger:
“The Fifty Year Wound”, Derek Leebaert
Dec 10, 2005 - 9:37 am 17. DougJ:Pinter was given the Nobel because of his anti-American views. No one regards him as major playwright. I had never even heard of him before. Had any of you?
Dec 11, 2005 - 9:57 pm