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Harold Pinter
By Michael Billington
Faber and Faber £9.99
Newly Updated 2007 Edition 468 pages
Dateline: 24th June, 2007
The towering importance of Harold Pinter as a playwright can be judged
in any one of a dozen ways but the fact that, as a result of his fame,
the dictionary is one word bigger - the immediately recognisable "Pinteresque"
- speaks volumes.
He has been fortunate, or possibly wise, in having chosen the Guardian's
theatre critic Michael Billington as his biographer. This book is a
testimony not only to the irascible genius of the playwright but also
the admirable skills of the man who writes about him and understands
his work so well.
The doyen of theatre critics spent four years researching this book
and it shows. He starts from the position of having a rare empathy for
his subject. He then combines the rigorous research skills of the kind
of academic who rarely emerges into the light of day, with insightful
analysis and the ability to write prose that is always readable. It
seems as , whenever a source document is mentioned, the biographer has
been to the trouble of reading it and placing it in context, however
obscure or potentially irrelevant the book or article might seem.
The story starts with a rebellious but very talented teenager in east
London just after the war. Harold Pinter and the small clique with whom
he passed his time would seem unusually intelligent at a University
today. They were working-class aesthetes, more often than not with Jewish
antecedents.
They loved the arts and soon all were indulging themselves in different
fields and feeding off each other. Pinter started professional life
as an actor, learning much touring Ireland in the company of the great
actor/manager Anew McMaster. Soon enough, he had begun writing impenetrable
poetry and then plays.
His debut play, The Birthday Party, made quite a splash, though
for the wrong reasons, as the critics panned it and it closed almost
immediately. Thereafter, starting with The Caretaker, Pinter
became a big name, having success after success with a new type of theatre
closest to Beckett and Ionesco but really all his own.
Michael Billington's strength is in analysing the work and then extrapolating
from it to help readers to understand the personality of the man who
wrote it. He is strong-minded enough to give his own opinions on the
writing and, at times, might well have at least as good an understanding
as Harold Pinter of what was originally written almost unconsciously.
In particular, the critic tracks down the sources that led to the creation
of almost every play in what has now become a mighty canon.
While the main focus is on the work, a portrait of the artist emerges,
showing him to be a harsh but very loyal man who gave up a traumatic
marriage for one that sounds constantly happy and gave him a solid base
from which to write and take on big political issues both on and off
the stage.
Like his subject, Billington has the knack of summing up Pinter's character
in a few words, "Pinter's faithful reproduction of the repetitions,
hesitations and lacunae of everyday speech, alongside the exuberance
of street argot, is his single most important contribution to British
drama. Post-Pinter we learned to hear plays differently and become impatient
with verbal excess".
This is taken from Memory Man, which was the final chapter in
the first edition of his book a dozen years back. It is a perfect summation
of the essence of a great playwright, certainly one of the finest of
his generation and that may be understating his importance.
For some reason, there has not been an especially large canon of theatre
anthologies in recent years but anybody compiling one should look to
this chapter as a compulsory inclusion.
The 2007 edition is extended to include a résumé
of a difficult decade where illness has increasingly taken over the
playwright's life, although he has still written and acted, recently
appearing at the Royal Court in Krapp's
Last Tape. There is also the full text of Pinter's Nobel Prize
acceptance speech, which combines some interesting thoughts on his work
with a tirade against George Bush's Imperial ambitions.
There can be few biographies of artists in the widest sense of the
term that have the thoroughness and intelligence, as well as deep critical
analysis that this book demonstrates. We should be thankful to Michael
Billington and Harold Pinter that this volume exists as a wonderful
tribute to them both.
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