Harold Pinter wins the Nobel Prize in Literature

Die Tageszeitung, 14.10.2005

"Harold Pinter? What a disappointment! A terrible decision! These were the first sounds to come from the cultural editors here," writes Gerrit Bartels, "and moments later, the first dumbfounded reactions started coming over the ticker from major critics like Sigrid Löffler ('strange choice') or Denis Scheck, who called the choice of Harold Pinter an 'insult to world literature'. Now one could ask: 'My goodness! Why not Harold Pinter?' even if he is no longer in vogue as a playwright and no longer speaks to us today." In a way, Bartels continues, the "Academy's decision to award the prize to Pinter is almost wise: It hasn't destroyed their reputation, but it has very effectively lowered people's expectations."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14.10.2005

For all their mysteriousness, Harold Pinter's early plays have the disadvantage of being boring, writes Gerhard Stadelmaier. And as for the later ones: "His last plays are ever more anaemic, dumb and hollow, but they are also increasingly upstanding politically, for example in 'Party Time'. In that play he uses formidable dramatic verve to confront a genteel and degenerate party of Westerners with the fact that, while they chug champagne and gobble down caviare, elsewhere the cries of the tortured are rising from the cellars. No one can reproach him for that. All you can do is nod your head. But do we go to the theatre to nod our heads?" Gina Thomas reports in a further article that at swank events, Pinter has the unfortunate habit of having fits of rage over Chernobyl and other such subjects.


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14.10.2005

Christine Dössel considers the P.E.N. Hermann Kesten Medal that Pinter was awarded in 2001 for his political engagement to have been "a more fitting distinction than a Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded 30 years too late". And for Thomas Steinfeld, the Swedish academy's distinction is an "increasingly erratic event". Yesterday's decision was met with some confusion; the nicely prepared book tables in Stockholm didn't have "a single work" by Pinter on them. "The literature and theatre critics of the Swedish capital are all struggling to keep their composure. Some tried to recall something they read in an English class 20 or 30 years ago, that might justify the decision. But it didn't help, because the truth is all too obvious: the decision for Pinter is an inconsolable, sectarian, anachronistic and worse, horribly boring choice. We'll never understand how it came to this."

Theatre director Luc Bondy, on the other hand, is delighted by the choice. "Pinter is an author of great scope. The Nobel Prize was awarded to Beckett, and it could very well have been given to Ionesco. Pinter is not just any old social-critic playwright. Now I'm going to say something shocking: For me more will remain of Pinter than of Brecht."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 14.10.2005

Dramatist Thomas Oberender congratulates Harold Pinter on his Nobel Prize, and remembers "moving performances" of his plays. "How young and fresh were Pinter's plays, in the half-light of those rooms so fully removed from the here and now. In Jürgen Kruse's staging of "The Dumb Waiter", two young men play at being hoodlums in a room that becomes a third character. They are dangerous, half child and half killer, half friend and half enemy. The characters have a way of playing with their role, which is both mask and mission. Everything becomes a game, revealing the real functioning of power. Games between people are ultimately what 'make' the people what they are. The play is highly astute and – like most of his plays – has a striking punchline."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14.10.2005

No criticism of the new Literature Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter is to be found in the pages of the NZZ. On the contrary: two articles praise his artistic use of language. For Bruno von Lutz, Pinter's interest lies "from the outset in the creation of atmospheres. There's a Beckett-like atmosphere of fatigue and finality, but we are spared absurdity with concrete dangers, threatening gestures and even acts of violence. But above all, Pinter relies on the economy of language, small slips of the tongue, moments of forgetfulness, repetitions, intentional and unintentional misunderstandings. Language peters out into nothingness. Often the plays revolve around a single word, which then becomes the leitmotiv of the entire work."


Berliner Zeitung, 14.10.2005

Roland Koberg relates a nice Pinter anecdote: "During one of his last visits to Samuel Beckett before his death, Harold Pinter told him how depressed he was by the current state of affairs in the world. Beckett laughed sardonically and said, 'Not as depressed as I am, Harold.'" (here a frank Pinter on Beckett)