Pinter, Harold

Average customer rating:

Saying Everything With Very Little
Elegantly Absurd
What's your point?
What a waste of time and money
A Nobel undeserved

Complete Works, Volume I
Harold Pinter
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0802150969

Customer Reviews:

Saying Everything With Very Little.......2006-08-12

Alas this isn't the best of his works - Death etc. was most impressive. But The Room and The Black and White make for fascinating reads, and should be even more exciting when staged. This should come before Beckett in anyone's reading.

Elegantly Absurd.......2006-08-08

HAROLD Pinter's career as a playwright is highly distinguished by anyone's reckoning. Many critics have no reservations in calling him 'our greatest living playwright'. But few would argue that it is on a handful of stage plays, from The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, and The Homecoming in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to Old Times, No Man's Land, and Betrayal in the 1970s, that his reputation rests.

In recent times, Pinter's celebrity has depended more on his politics than on his plays. The master of the dramatic pause now seems more of a rebel without a pause, taking almost every opportunity to make moral pronouncements on current affairs. A scathing critic of US foreign policy and British Government support for it, he was prominent in the popular campaign against the recent Iraq war, even penning a poem in the lead-up to the conflict: 'Here they go again/The Yanks in their armoured parade/Chanting their ballads of joy/As they gallop across the big world/Praising America's God...'

In an earlier letter to the New York Review of Books in 1994, Pinter differentiated US foreign policy from the mass murder inspired by Hitler, Stalin and Mao only on the grounds of its moral hypocrisy: 'The great difference between the ruthless foreign policy of the US and other equally ruthless policies is that US propaganda is infinitely cleverer and the Western media wonderfully compliant'.

What's your point?.......2006-03-10

One review of Pinter's plays says that "part of the greatness of Pinter's work is that I'm at a loss to explain it." What complete and utter rubbish! Basically that means that either Pinter is great because I'm too dumb to understand him, or Pinter is great because he makes no sense, so obviously he is really deep and profound. Well here's my take: I'm comfortably on the upper half of the food chain when it comes to intelligence, and when I'm at a loss to explain why an author's work is great, it's because his work, in fact, is not great. I wouldn't say the same thing about nuclear physics or brain surgery - when somebody does great work in those fields and I don't understand it, I'll chalk it up to "this guy might be really smart and I just don't know what he's talking about." But literature? Come on... the whole point of literature is that it is supposed to connect with the reader, not bewilder him. It's supposed to reveal meaningful truths about humanity, not leave us feeling dazed and confused. It's supposed to create a bond between writer and reader, not create a vast intellectual divide.

So back to Mr. Pinter... He's just not all that good. I will say a few nice things about him. The plays aren't boring, as some people have suggested. Seriously, how can you get bored reading a play that's only 30 pages long? The cadence of the dialog is catchy, and the plays have a certain rhythm to them that you can tap your foot to. And Pinter is very good at creating a sense of anxiety within his characters. Since there isn't much going on in these plays in terms of action, and since the stage is sparsely decorated, and the dialog is often terse and stunted, the reader ends up focusing more on what is not there, and what is not happening, and what is not being said, rather than what is. So you constantly ask yourself, Who are those people in the basement that we know nothing about and who we are never going to meet? What is this job that is going to be done, but never gets described in any kind of detail? By building his plays around characters who never appear and events that never occur, Pinter forces us to wonder anxiously about the unknown. He creates this eerie sense of mystery, this feeling that we are all alone in a world that we know very little about.

But here's the key question: So what? Sure, he's good at making us feel uncomfortable, but he doesn't take it any farther than that. You would think that to win the Nobel Prize, your readers would at least have to understand why you want them to feel uncomfortable. What is your message? What are you saying about our world and the human experience? It's simply not enough to create a mood. There has to be a point to it, and it's just not clear what the point is to these plays.

What a waste of time and money.......2005-12-18

First, the reason for one star is a reminder to leave Pinter's plays to others.

I read the "The Birthday Party," and, "The Room," and may or may not read the rest of the plays.

Informatively I am an avid reader with a vast collection.

The Birthday Party and The Room did not have one redeeming feature. I could not believe that anything written could be so bad.

In my opinion both were absolute garbage and I wonder how and why in the first place it was every published. When I finished reading this nonsense a thought came to mind as follows:
If a monkey was placed by a computer keyboard and was allowed to
go crazy hitting the keys, the result would probably be, "The Birthday Party and The Room.

Since I was punished enough reading the above, reading the rest of the plays would only compound my bewilderment and disappointment in choosing this book.

If this book was offered to a publisher by a writer other than Harold Pinter and the editor read the first two plays, if he read that far, which I doubt, he would have thrown the book in his waste basket followed by an oath.

Unfortunately, I purchased a couple of the Pinter Books from Amazon.com and will check them out only because I purchased them
and am curious to learn if they are as bad a read as the one I reviewed.

Robert Lyons
Reno, Nevada

A Nobel undeserved .......2005-10-14

Pinter's work is the proof that you can manage to be boring without being longwinded. I have always found him close to impossible to read. As for the famous pauses and threats which make his onstage theatre so compelling to his fans, these I have found only heighten the annoying quality of the reading.

Pinter is an heir of Beckett and belongs to 'The Real Mankind is the diminished broken fragment of itself' school.
But these broken voices, these characters always seeming to menace and imprison each other, present a kind of picture of humanity at one minor extreme only.

Pinter in his political work presents himself as a spokesman for the oppressed of Mankind and has for years attacked the United States.

The United States is without its faults, mistakes and misjudgments nonetheless the single major force in the world which prevents Mankind from falling into a dark night of Totalitarian Terror.

To take advantage of the freedoms given by the world's democracies to attack in an exaggerated way these democracies
is the kind of moral teaching which can lead Mankind to nothing but a 'dark night of the soul' in which no one will ever dare to read the kind of literary work Pinter has devoted his life to.

Average customer rating:

It creeps up on you, it does.
Home is where the heart is
this play shows its age
Family Reunion to Avoid
It's Theatre of the Absurd, people!

The Homecoming
Harold Pinter
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0802151051

Customer Reviews:

It creeps up on you, it does........2007-01-26

Harold Pinter, The Homecoming (Grove, 1965)

I spent the first act of this effort from our most recent Nobel Prize winner for literature thinking "my, this is all well and good, but what is it about this play that had everyone telling me this needs to be the first Pinter I read?" Then came act two, and I understood it.

The Homecoming starts off (as you might expect given that first paragraph) unassumingly enough; a man and his wife of six years return to his ancestral home. His brothers, uncle, and father live there, and are meeting his wife for the first time; the brothers, roustabouts both of them, act a bit oddly (well, actually, a bit naturally) around the wife at first, but there's nothing terribly out of the ordinary. In fact, there's a surprising lack of family tension; the normally prickly father welcomes his wayward son home with open arms.

Then, of course, everything goes to pot in the most entertaining manner possible. I have spent years reading thousands of volumes wondering why it is that everyone has to over-emote; The Homecoming is the absolute, perfect antithesis, and I spent the entire second act wishing that these characters inhabited at least half the novels I've read in the past decade. They're deliciously perverse, and so very deadpan about it. Now, while Pinter is busy creating these characters and putting them into interesting situations (and the situations are interesting enough that the entire play can take place in a single room), he's offering some excellent satire on the family dynamic, but Pinter is talented enough to let the satire speak for itself while he concentrates on the story at hand, the mark of a man who knows how to write.

This is very good stuff, and I'll definitely be diving farther into Pinter in the coming years. *** ½

Home is where the heart is.......2005-11-07

5 stars going on 10. It will take me weeks to digest this one. Little bit of a surprise, eh? So Pinter is not just a political campaigner.

The quality of the dialogue knocked me off my feet. Conventions seem well-established but aren't quite the expected conventions. The family is close but not quite the expected closeness. This is hardly a dysfunctional family: it's just a family not functioning as you might have been taught a family should.

I recently watched the 1973 American Film Theatre performance of this play on VHS. Vivian Merchant, who also starred in the American Film Theatre's version of Jean Genet's "The Maids", plays Ruth in "The Homecoming". How to expect a better cast? In the hands of those incredible actors, this play slammed into me. It will take me days to find suitable words to describe what hit me. Unlike the plays of Pinter's friend Beckett, "The Homecoming" can't be dismissed as Theatre of the Absurd. Not that there isn't absurdity, but that Pinter works hard to interwine it with familiar daily routines.

No boring moments. At the beginning the hostilities seemeed contrived but very soon a lot more was going on. Most of us aren't as creative as this family in finding a way to make the family work ... and most of us probably wouldn't want to be. But they are close and not just because of what they share during this visit. The father especially struck me as rising above his angers to find a love (however unconventional) for his sons and that warmth became unmistakeable as the play progressed. No? Well, something special is going on in "The Homecoming" and I'll probably need many passes to understand what it is. But, with such rich dialogue, many passes seem warranted.

this play shows its age.......2002-01-30

This play caused a great controversial stir when it was first performed in 1965. This is supposed to be a classic example of an existentialist and absurdist play. It was Pinter's first stage play and the one that made his reputation. Although it was very daring and shocking in 1965, the play has aged and lost its freshness and original power, in my opinion. There are many other portrayals of dysfunctional families that have retained their freshness and power--such families have been a mainstay of drama from the time of the ancient Greeks. Shakespeare and even fairy tales have built themselves around exploring the dark and abusive aspects of the family dynamic. So Pinter's on to nothing new or radical here. The script as such is blatantly misogynist. The one female role, Ruth, has no lines that sound human--she comes across as a stilted android. Ruth is so obviously not a real woman but a male projection of lust, fear, possession, hate, and paranoia. I recently saw this play performed in Manchester, UK, and have to wonder why people still think this play, with all its misogynist posturing, is relevant to a contemporary audience. If it were just a black absurd comedy, it might have worked better for me, but Pinter seems to be aiming at something deeper and more menacing yet can't seem to make up his mind if we're supposed to be feeling sympathy with his characters or taking them (and the underlying meaning of the play) seriously or not.

Family Reunion to Avoid.......2001-07-31

Pinter at his darkest and most experimental.

This play's first and second acts are of equal length down to the line.

Sexual deviance, abuse, name calling, assault and torture: these are the norm. These people make the rest of our families seem pretty good. The play is twisted and as much a psychological journey as anything else.

Pinter lives up the claim that his plays were like, "Beckett in doors," with this one. Though most of Pinter's plays have a dark edge to them, this one may even cross over the line, if you are paying close attention to what is really going on.

Worth reading at least twice, after the shock from the first time through, the second read (if read closely), becomes even darker and more forbidding.

Wonderfully written, and further proof that Pinter is one of the masters of modern British drama.

It's Theatre of the Absurd, people!.......2000-11-22

I agree that this play could be viewed at totally crazy, but it's supposed to. I really loved this play. I think Pinter has an excellent way of making us step back, and be disgusted and enjoy a show at the same time.

It's not supposed to have a beginning, middle, or an end. It is more like real life than realism is. It's not a life full of 'Drama,'it's more like real life, only we can find it funny because it's not happening to us.

Read Pinter with an open mind, and a sense of humor. Try not to take him litererally, but read the subtext.

Betrayal (Pinter, Harold)
Average customer rating:

One of the best plays ever written

One of Pinter's strongest plays, betrayal in all its forms

Been there, played that.

Almost too convincing

Ionesco would be proud

Betrayal (Pinter, Harold)
Harold Pinter
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0802130801

Customer Reviews:

One of the best plays ever written.......2004-11-20

One of the best plays I've read, if not the best. I've spent three months directing this play, and I wouldn't have invested that time if it hadn't meant a lot to me.

Let me add that I could not have asked for a better run. We blew away at least some of the audience every night -- had the whole audience leaning forward on the edge of their seats (never seen that before in a theatre!), had people crying, had people talking about it for hours afterwards. So, if you're looking for a good play to produce or direct...

Some background info to start. It's nine scenes. It's about 90 minutes running time, depending on how you work the deafening pauses. It has three characters plus one (there's an unnamed waiter that appears in one of the scenes). It can be performed on a minimalist set. It largely plays backwards in time, like Memento or Irreversible.

It's an examination of a seven-year affair between two married people. It explores all the emotions you go through in the situation, and all the different types of betrayal. It's considered the classic study of the situation and Pinter's most accessible work, and it's probably his most personal. It's based on Pinter's real life affair with Joan Bakewell, "the thinking man's crumpet". Pinter wrote no full-length play after it till 1994. It was first produced in 1978, made into a (fairly boring) movie with Jeremy Irons in 1983, for which Pinter wrote the screenplay and an extra scene 8.5. I think the most famous production was in New York in 2000, starring Juliette Binoche. And the play has a Seinfeld episode based on it (the one where Elaine's friend gets married in India).

Why am I so wowed by it? Where to start... Let me break it into three things.

Firstly, the structure is compelling. And Betrayal may have been the original -- I can't think of an earlier instance of the backwards-in-time narrative. Backwards-in-time means the audience usually knows more than the characters, is driven by "how" rather than "what", and you get a lot of unusual dramatic effects. Characters misremember things, details are filled out or references explained. And the events of the past progressively become more significant: all the inevitability of the future is written on them. Consider the final moment of the play, the moment when the affair begins -- the two characters simply look at each other, and they just know. As an audience, you feel hopeful, but at the same time you're aware of all the horrible stuff they're going to go through over the next nine years, so it's a beautiful moment, but also incredibly sad.

Secondly the language, line-by-line, is amazing. There is no other English play that says so little and implies so much. And, if you read the biographies, you'll find that Pinter took enormous care over this -- every pause is significant. It requires brilliant acting -- characters *never* say what they mean, what they're feeling or thinking. On the surface, they might be making small talk or joking around, but beneath the words they're angry, frustrated, vengeful...

Lastly, the issues the play deals with are close to every audience's home. I mean, the subject matter is all the doubts, worries, insecurities, jealousies, and ecstasies of relationships -- everyone will find something in here that they relate to, that's painful or touching because it's so true. The play takes the most personal, meaningful issues, and it handles them with sensitivity, in all their complexity.

Harold Pinter's website is http://www.haroldpinter.org/

One of Pinter's strongest plays, betrayal in all its forms.......2002-12-16

One of Harold Pinter's most ambitious undertakings, his 1978 play BETRAYAL ranks among his finest works. Often called a sly comedy of sexual manners, BETRAYAL encompasses much more than just adultery.

BETRAYAL has only three main characters (plus a waiter in a single scene). There is Jerry and Emma, who years before had an affair, and Emma's husband Robert, who happens to be Jerry's best friend and business partner. Pinter ingeniously has the play occur in reverse chronological order, so that it begins with a meeting between Jerry and Emma in 1977, years after their affair, and it ends with a shocking scene from 1968. The ending gives BETRAYAL a great deal of reread value, as one can go back through the play and apply the secret revealed in its final moments.

While adultery is the most evident theme of the play, it is about other forms of betrayal: how we betray our friends, betray our spouses by permitting them to break the bonds of marriage, and how our words and actions betray the secrets we strive to hide. Pinter's usual theme of the unknowability of our lifelong partners is even more strongly shown here than in other plays.

BETRAYAL is an excellent play for anyone who likes the work of Harold Pinter. Even if you became interested in the playwright's work through his late political plays like "The New World Order" and "Party Time", this more "traditional" work will excite.

Been there, played that........2002-04-22

I performed Scene 8 from "Betrayal" in a theater class, and read the rest of the play in order to form a character analysis of Emma. I found the play intersting, but slightly odd. Some of the wording made no sense, and there were times when the references seemed out of place and just in there for laughs. The play itself was an old idea broadcast in a new way-backwards. It left me feeling bittersweet as I saw how it ended, and then saw how sweetly it started. I recommend the play for its difference in story telling, but I'm not so thrilled with it that I would insist you see a showing. It really seems to come down to the tastes of the person. This one wasn't really my taste.

Almost too convincing.......2001-08-27

This play by Harold Pinter is about a three characters who are all cheating on each other. The most interesting aspect of this play is Pinter's technique of telling the story backwards. The audience comes in at the end of the affair. From that point the story basically proceeds back through time. The only problem I have with this play is that I don't like any of the characters. Jerry and Emma seem sleazy, and Robert is just a jerk. It makes it difficult to feel anything for the characters. This definitely does not ruin the play however. If you notice this playing at your local theatre, find time to go; you will have a great time.

Ionesco would be proud.......2000-04-06

Part of a collection of Harold Pinter's works, this is a comedy of sexual manners in which Pinter captures the psyche's sly manoeuvres for self-respect with sardonic forgiveness. Written in 1978 by the author of "The Caretaker", "The Lover", "The Homecoming" and "The Birthday Party". This is a great read for lovers of the modern stage and a must for any Pinter collector.

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The Birthday Party
sinister intent?
Laugh Out Loud, Funny!

The Birthday Party & The Room
Harold Pinter
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

The Birthday Party.......2001-03-14

The Birthday Party is a very good play about a young man and his inevitable and perhaps unavoidable fate. The plot is quite simple, yet it is also elegant in its simplicity. Without saying too much, the story is about a young man who has been living for some time in a beach-sited boarding house owned by a mid-aged couple. These characters lives' are invaded by two men who for some unknown reason want to catch the young man. The story evolves...

The play is captivating and exciting, at some points also downright scary. Pinter has obviously used techniques of how to seize the attention of an audience, something a reader will surely experience. The incertainty and unease that fills the story is highly credible, as one easily can identify the feelings that fills you when something sudden, dangerous and unavoidable happens to you.

I think Pinter perhaps has found inspiration in other authors works. As I read it, I came to think on Hemingways short story "The Killers" and the sense of utter despair of Kafka's "The Trial". Please do not shoot me should you disagree..

As a play, one recognizes elements that characterize most great playwrights, both classical and modern, due to its "actor-friendliness" and room for interpretation.

Recommended, indeed.

And one last thing to Ken (The reviewer): Unless you follow the idea that Meg has a brain-disfunction, She is definitely not Stanleys mother.

sinister intent?.......2001-02-08

Harold Pinter's _The Birthday Party_:

A young man lives with his mother at a run-down boarding house near the beach. Two visitors come and shake things up. They don't do anything wild or unusual, but they question and intimidate the young man, until the reader becomes unsure what sinister plans the two men have in mind.

Pinter's strength lies in his dialogue, which is thoroughly believable and memorable. Not for a moment does the reader doubt that these scenes could happen (and may HAVE happened) in real life.

As this reader read the play, the tension built and built, as I became more and more sympathetic to the young man, awaiting to learn his fate, as his own will seemingly deteriorated.

I would agree that this play is a funny read, but it's certainly very unsettling as well.

If you haven't read anything by Harold Pinter, or are curious because you've read his other plays, _The Birthday Party_ is worth checking out.

ken32

Laugh Out Loud, Funny!.......1999-09-26

A side splitting send up of the misunderstood artist.

One of the funniest plays of the century, by one of England's greatest playwrights.

Bring your knife and fork!

Complete Works, Volume IV
Average customer rating:

One of the finest playwrights of the twentieth century

Complete Works, Volume IV
Harold Pinter
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Pinter, Harold | ( P ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0802150500

Customer Reviews:

One of the finest playwrights of the twentieth century.......1999-10-17

Harold Pinter is one of the stellar dramatic voices of the century. These plays are brilliant and intriguing in performance and well worth a careful read.

Complete Works : Two : The Caretaker, the Dwarfs, the Collection, the Lover, Night School, Revue Sketches

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Revue Sketches

Complete Works : Two : The Caretaker, the Dwarfs, the Collection, the Lover, Night School, Revue Sketches
Harold Pinter
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0802132375

Customer Reviews:

Revue Sketches.......2006-07-12

I saw the Revue Sketches animated with the original dialogue on PBS in the late 60's. 'Trouble in the Works', a dialogue between the owner and head foreman in a machine parts factory, was hilarios with a lot of punning on the names of the parts. 'Last to Go' was also a funny and poignant sketch about a minimal conversation between a corner newspaper seller and customer about which London daily is the last one sold. The other plays I'm not familiar with.

The Essential Pinter: Selections from the Work of Harold Pinter (Grove Press Eastern Philosophy and Literature)

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The Essential Pinter: Selections from the Work of Harold Pinter (Grove Press Eastern Philosophy and Literature)
Harold Pinter
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Conversations with Pinter
Far Away
Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics
Stuff Happens: A Play
Tom Stoppard: Plays 5 : Arcadia, The Real Thing, Night & Day, Indian Ink, Hapgood

ASIN: 0802142699

Book Description

Harold Pinter is one of our most profound poets and playwrights, with work ranging from his plays The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Betrayal to such poems as "The Bombs" and "Death." A writer known for his searing exploration of power, Pinter gives us an electrifying look into the often uncomfortable relationships between people — whether family members or political opponents. The Essential Pinter, which includes key plays, poetry, essays, and screenplays, is an indispensable companion for anyone wishing to delve into the astonishingly dazzling and frequently ominous world of Harold Pinter. In voyaging in, we not only come to fully appreciate the breadth of a body of work spanning over fifty years, but acquire a better understanding of human interaction.

The Proust Screenplay: a la Recherche du Temps Perdu

Average customer rating:

Surprisingly convincing
Pinter takes a stab
Too bad this was never made into a movie.

The Proust Screenplay: a la Recherche du Temps Perdu
Harold Pinter , Joseph Losey , and Barbara Bray
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 080213646X

Book Description

In the early 1970s Harold Pinter joined forces with director Joseph Losey and Proust scholar Barbara Bray to develop a screenplay of Proust's masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past. Pinter took more than a year to conceive and write the screenplay and called the experience "the best working year of my life." Although never produced, Harold Pinter's The Proust Screenplay is considered one of the greatest adaptations for the cinema ever written.

With fidelity to Proust's text, the screenplay is an extraordinary re-creation by one of the leading playwrights of our time. It is, in its way, a unique collaboration between two extraordinary writers united across more than half a century and two different cultures by a special concern for time and memory.

Customer Reviews:

Surprisingly convincing.......2006-10-21

Summarizing Marcel Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu" is often seen as a hopeless endeavour, an undertaking so absurd it fit in perfectly with Monty Python humour and the reader must still be content with extracts of some passage or another unless he dares conquer the whole seven-volume masterpiece. In 1972, Nicole Stephane, who held the film rights to Proust's work, asked Joseph Losey if he would like to work on a film version. Losey turned to Pinter to write the screenplay, and THE PROUST SCREENPLAY was written over the following year.

The screenplay covers all of the Recherche, Pinter rejected any attempt to select one or two volumes as the center. The dramatic arc is twofold: on one hand the narrator moves toward disillusion in his personal life, but on the other hand all that has been lost (ultimately Time itself) is regained and then preserved permanently in the narrator's writing. The screenplay consists of 455 scenes, and just to give an idea of how compressed the narrative must be, the entire opening of "A la cote du chez Swann" up to "Un Amour de Swann" is represented in just fifteen pages of sparse script. But even with such trims, it is said that a film resulting from the screenplay would be about five hours long.

The action shifts among eras from scene to scene. Marcel sees M. Vinteuil's daughter and her lover in 1893, and in the next scene Albertine is telling him in 1901 of her esteem for the couple. Many scenes are single images. Scenes 134 and 135 are only of Saint-Loup looking at a photograph, 136 is only of an empty dining room in a hotel, and then 137 is of a band of girls on a cliff top in Balbec. However, there is a considerable amount of substantial dialogue here, especially in the tortured relationship of Marcel and Albertine. Of course, as this is a dramatic work by Pinter, we find the infamous "Pinter pause", but generally the voice is that of Proust, not the grim English playwright.

What a pity this film was never made. Although the common cinephile who has never read the Recherche wouldn't know the backstory of all characters and events, the film would still be a moving experience. For lovers of Proust's masterpiece, the screenplay is an opportunity to consider several portions of the novel in a new light due to Pinter's often relevatory telescoping of the story. At least the screenplay was printed and made widely available. If you've never read Proust, read him! And if you like the Recherche and are curious about a dramatization, do check out Pinter's creation.

Pinter takes a stab.......2003-10-30

Harold Pinter's screenplay of Proust's novel is commendable. It does not try to cram too much in, but instead relies on a more imagistic adaptation. Raoul Ruiz's recent movie "Time Regained" wasn't dissimilar--although named after the last volume, it really drew from the whole work. However, I have to feel that even so, it was of little interest to those not familiar with the novel. I think a movie based on Pinter's screenplay, as good as the screenplay is, would suffer the same fate. It would be a visual tone poem for the Proust fan, capturing one thing but leaving out a dozen others. The meat of the novel is in the narration, and I'm afraid the best way to translate it to the screen would be through a miniseries, even a regular series. It's the only medium that stands a chance at duplicating the scope of the novel. One has to remember that its great length is no accident, it helps constitute the very nature of the story. Pinter ought to expand his screenplay, like Proust expanded his early drafts of the recherche, to give a greater impression of the time lost, and give it to the BBC or something.

Too bad this was never made into a movie........2001-10-16

A screenplay of Proust's In Search of Lost Time sounds like a hopeless project. In the most recent translation, Proust's novel ran to over 4,000 pages. Reducing this to a screenplay would seem to require cuts of such magnitude that nothing of the novel would be left. Indeed, those movies that have been made of the novel usually are of a small part, like the Swann in Love section of Swann's Way. Pinter, however, managed to pull off the impossible. He concentrated on key events in the novel, and even more on key images. It is hard to say whether this would have worked with someone totally unfamilar with the material. However, presenting Proust's novel in any literal fashion would be impossible, and probably contrary to what he attempted to accomplish in his novel. Pinter's screenplay, for anyone who has read the novel, is a tremendous success. Unfortunately, it was never made into a movie.

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Great poetry needs no gimmicks
Eclectic Anthology - Stimulating and Provocative
Provocative poetry picks by England's pre-eminent playwright

100 Poems by 100 Poets: An Anthology

Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Anthologies | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

100 Best-Loved Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
99 Poems in Translation
101 Great American Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
Collected Poems and Prose
Great Short Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

ASIN: 0802132790

Customer Reviews:

Great poetry needs no gimmicks.......2005-05-03

The gimmick of this work is that the three friends choose the best poem of the one- hundred best poets in English. They discuss, they argue among themselves and then they present( unjustified) their selections to the reader.
This is I suppose one way of making yet another anthology of some of the greatest poems in the English Language. On that grounds the work is fine, and does contain many of the finest works in the language.
But if we take the work's premise seriously then the work is seriously flawed. First of all, in regard to many great poets( Shakespeare for example) it is sheer folly to think of selecting ' one poem' out of so many at the highest level. Secondly, the poems chosen here are often ( at least in my judgment) far indeed from the poet's greatest poetry. I know for instance Stevens' "The Emperor of Ice- Cream" is an often anthologized work but it is minor in comparison to many other Stevens' works. A third fault is that obscure poets are selected while some of the greatest, Milton, for instance are omitted. Milton's "On his Blindness" is one of the greatest short poems in the language.
I also would say that presenting the poetry in this way by author in alphabetic order with no sense of connection chronologically or thematically makes the whole business seem even more arbitrary.
I believe that any time a person has the opportunity to read or reread a great poem they should not miss the opportunity. This work is to be valued for presenting such opportunities in a new format. And this despite its shortcomings.

Eclectic Anthology - Stimulating and Provocative.......2003-02-17

These are not necessarily the best-loved poems, nor the most famous poems, nor the most memorized poems. These are the best poems written in the English language, one each from the 100 best poets. So say the three editors - Harold Pinter, Geoffrey Godbert, and Anthony Astbury.

They apparently argued heatedly, but eventually arrived at a unanimous decision for each poet selected. They may not change your mind, but their choices will stimulate and challenge the reader. And this anthology makes very good reading.

I was disappointed that Pinter, Godbert, and Astbury did not share their discussions and arguments. How did they select the 100 best poets? Who was 101? Where are John Milton, William Cullen Bryant, Longfellow, and Whittier? For those poets that were chosen, I was curious whether some of my favorite poems had even been discussed as they made their final selection of the 'best' poem. Did they have bias toward works less frequently included in popular anthologies? Were they intentionally provocative?

For example, they did not select Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, nor any of William Blake's poems from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, nor a poem from A. E. Housman's admired A Shropshire Lad, nor a familiar poem by Robert Frost, nor Dylan Thomas' well-known Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. I was also surprised by their choices for Kipling, Shelley, Pope, Donne, and to a lesser extent, Wordsworth.

Their selections for Shakespeare (I see many 'best' choices), Coleridge, Marvell, Keats (again, many 'best' poems), Burns, Carroll, Arnold, Poe, Stevens, and a few other poets were more in agreement with my preferences. I found that a bit reassuring.

I recommend this collection to anyone that enjoys poetry. Pinter, Godbert, and Astbury give us a selection that is less predictable than that found in most anthologies, and is thereby more provocative and stimulating. Have fun!

Provocative poetry picks by England's pre-eminent playwright.......1998-03-28

To kill time on a long trip, playwright Harold Pinter & 2 friends set themselves this task: pick the 100 most representative poems written in English. They excluded living poets in order to choose from a poet's whole corpus and they agreed to list the poems in alphabetical order by author.

The result: an anthology that ranges from the 13th-century to the present, from the formal love poems of John Skelton to the lacerating confessions of Sylvia Plath. One might not agree with some of Pinter's choices, but they comprise an interesting snapshot of several centuries of the art.

As idiosyncratic as this anthology is, it is also a testament to the broad tastes and deep appreciations of its editors. Could you have done better?

Customer Reviews:

Haunting but not as successful as his other plays of this era.......2005-10-05

Harold Pinter's 1996 play ASHES TO ASHES is a dialogue between Rebecca and Devlin, a married couple. Devlin is curious about Rebecca's former lover, here called a factory owner, here called a travel agent, who dominated her completely:

"REBECCA: Well, he would stand over me and clench his fist. And then he'd put his other hand on my neck and grip it and bring my head towards him. His fist ... grazed my mouth. And he'd say 'Kiss my fist.' " Devlin's proddings reveal that Rebecca's lover was no ordinary travel agent. "REBECCA: He did work from a travel agency. He was a guide. He used to go to the local railway station and walk down the platform and tear all the babies from the arms of their screaming mothers." Through these revelations, interspersed with the most banal of everyday conversation, Rebecca and Devlin remember, retell, and eventually re-enact the horrible shared history of the 20th century, with its Holocaust, wars, and massacres.

The brutality it recounts can make the reader or spectator very uncomfortable, and ASHES TO ASHES succeeds in reminding us of the horrors of the 20th century, horrors that any human being can fall into creating. However, I do not think it is quite as successful as other plays Pinter wrote in this same era, such as "Mountain Language" or "Party Time." Incidentally, I must express my disappointment that American edition altered Pinter's original text, giving "soccer" instead of "football".

A Critick.......2001-01-10

It was a fair way to state the problematical nature of criticism in the theater nowadays, to reduce Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? to a two-character one-act, and call it beautiful.

ASHES TO ASHES.......2000-07-06

ONE OF HAROLD PINTER'S RECENT PLAYS, THIS DRAMA GRAPHICALLY EXPLORES CONCERNS OF THE PLAYWRIGHT'S THAT HAVE BEEN FOREMOST IN HIS WRITING SINCE THE BEGINNING OF HIS CAREER ALONG WITH THOSE THAT HAVE BEEN FOREGROUNDED FOR THE PAST TWO DECADES. QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY, HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS, AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS ARE BLENDED WITH HIS POLITICAL INTERESTS, MOST PARTICULARLY WITH HIS EXPLORATION OF THE HOLOCAUST.

IN THIS GRIPPING STAGE PLAY, THE HEROINE TELLS A MAN ABOUT HER MEMORIES OF SEEING CHILDREN, HER OWN CHILD BEING AMONG THEM, BEING RIPPED FROM THEIR MOTHER'S ARMS BY MEN IN UNIFORM, ONE OF WHOM WAS HER LOVER. BUT, THE MAN CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE IS SAYING, AND SHE IS TOO YOUNG TO HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN THE HOLOCAUST. SO, IS SHE REMEMBERING ANOTHER, MORE RECENT HOLOCAUST, OR HAS THE HOLOCAUST BECOME PART OF A JUNGIAN, RACIAL MEMORY?

ALTHOUGH NOT A MODERN CLASSIC LIKE THE HOMECOMING OR OLD TIMES, THIS IS ONE OF THE DRAMATIST'S MOST MOVING WORKS.

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