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Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-2005
By Harold Pinter
Faber and Faber £12.99
266 pages
Dateline: 8th July, 2006
This new edition of Harold Pinter's collection of prose and poems is
updated from the version originally published in 1998. Although the
publishers did not know it at the time, publication occured at almost
exactly the same time as the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature. The publicity department at Faber's could hardly have asked
for a better sales-boosting contribution from their author!
The book is split into five sections reflecting the interests of the
writer, if one excludes his main field of drama. This, though, is seen
obliquely throughout the book both in his subtext and his style.
The first section contains non-fiction prose on a variety of different
subjects starting with a youthful note on Shakespeare that becomes a
Joycean list of adjectives.
There are also two fascinating pieces on The Birthday Party,
an immediate London flop that was panned by all of the critics except
the prescient Harold Hobson.
In the first, a letter to his director Peter Wood, the outline shows
a philosophy that has probably not changed in the following fifty years.
"Meaning that begins in the words, in the action, continues in
your head and ends nowhere. There is no end to meaning".
He elaborates in a lecture to the National Student Drama Festival in
1962 when he says that "The theatre is a large, energetic, public
activity. Writing is, for me, a completely private activity, a poem
or a play, no difference. These facts are not easy to reconcile".
In these two quotes, one gets an overwhelming feeling for what has
driven Harold Pinter's work throughout the 57 year period covered by
this book.
As well as writing on theatre, including two pieces on Beckett, this
section also contains a couple of essays on one of the writer's great
loves, cricket; and an interview with Michael Billington about film.
Next up is a selection of prose fiction, generally short and ephemeral
but with a style that many a reader would recognise almost instantly.
Picking up on the earlier quote, these sometimes impenetrable pieces
prove that in pros, as well as drama, there is no end to meaning.
Throughout this book, themes recur and whether it is cricket or drama,
philosophy or death, we remain firmly in Pinterland, whatever the medium.
The poetry, especially the early work when the writer was barely beyond
adolescence, is all too often unintelligible but later works, especially
those paying devoted homage to his wife, are spare but meaningful.
The theatre is not forgotten in the poetry and in particular, The
View of the Party sheds extra light on Stanley, Goldberg, McCann
et al.
Pinter is renowned as a political activist and writer with left-wing
tendencies and believes that wrong must be named for it to be attacked
and destroyed. He rips into a succession of US administrations (and
even that nice Mrs Thatcher) with energetic vigour, using statistics
and his own ethical stance as twin weapons. Unsurprisingly but coherently,
he also makes a strong case for language, or its subversion, to be a
critical facet utilised by repressive governments.
This section also includes a superb interview with the playwright in
Barcelona conducted by two university professors, Mireia Aragay and
Ramon Simó, in which, from the viewpoint of a new production
of Ashes to Ashes, Pinter's attitudes to theatre, his own writing
and critics are fascinatingly addressed.
Eventually the attacks on the White House and the current George Bush
become repetitive and it is with some relief that we move into a final
short selection of recent poems about war and its consequences that
are all both short and moving. Arguably, these say far more about the
devastation caused by US empire builders than all the prose put together.
Various Voices is a tremendous opportunity to enter into the
mind of one of the great playwrights of the last century and the early
part of this one. It also presents a singular, frustrated view of life
in Britain today, from a man who is in no doubt that Tony Blair has,
at least metaphorically, sold the Crown Jewels to his best mate across
the Atlantic.
Articles from 2006
Articles from 2005
Articles from 2004
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Articles from 1998
Articles from 1997
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