Obit: Harold Pinter RIP (24 Dec 2008)

Subject: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP
From: Rasener
Date: 25 Dec 08 - 10:33 AM

UK playwright Harold Pinter dies

Many of Pinter's plays are considered classics
Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter has died aged 78.

Pinter, who died on Christmas Eve, had been suffering from liver cancer, it is understood.

Pinter wrote more than 30 plays including The Caretaker, The Homecoming and The Dumb Waiter. His film scripts include The French Lieutenant's Woman.


RIP

Subject: RE: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 Dec 08 - 10:41 AM

Sad sad sad, I seem to have been hearing of so many deaths this Christmas, including yet another marine in Helmond.
What a terrible and sad present for any family, and one that will live with them forever, as each successive Christmas will remind them of their loss.

RIP all.

Subject: RE: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP
From: GUEST,Partridge in a Pear Tree
Date: 25 Dec 08 - 11:33 AM

(Pause)

Silence.

RIP

Subject: RE: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP
From: alanabit
Date: 25 Dec 08 - 12:33 PM

He was one of the most important voices in British theatre after the war.

Subject: RE: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP
From: GUEST,woodsie
Date: 25 Dec 08 - 12:42 PM

The Caretaker (Film) with Alan Bates, Robert Shaw & Donald Pleasance was the frekliest film I ever saw. Real pschedelia

Subject: RE: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP (24 Dec 2008)
From: catspaw49
Date: 25 Dec 08 - 11:05 PM

A great writer but I will forever admire his strong stand against the tyranny that America has dished out and at the UK for supporting them.

From MSNBC obit:

"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law," Pinter said in his Nobel lecture, which he recorded rather than traveling to Stockholm.

"How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?" he asked, in a hoarse voice.

AND:

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them," he said.

The United States, he added, "also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain."

ALSO:

Pinter fulminated against what he saw as the overweening arrogance of American power, and belittled Blair as seeming like a "deluded idiot" in support of Bush's war in Iraq.


Thank you

Spaw

Subject: RE: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP (24 Dec 2008)
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 01:28 AM

A SINE QUA NON

Harold Pinter opened his 2005 lecture for the Nobel Prize in Literature with the following words: "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." He went on to say that he believed that these assertions made by him in 1958 still made sense and still applied to the exploration of reality through art. He said that as a writer he stood by these ideas, but as a citizen he could not do so. As a citizen, he said, he had to ask: What is true and what is false? And so do I. And as a citizen I ask the question and I answer: the Baha'i teachings. We all have to answer that question in our own way, eh Harold?

Truth in drama as in poetry is forever elusive. You approach it, but you never quite find the whole of it. The search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly one of the major forces that drives the artistic endeavor. The search is a major task both in life and in art. Sometimes you stumble upon the truth in the dark, sometimes in the light; sometimes you collide with it or just glimpse an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art, as Pinter concluded or in poetry as I must conclude after more than 40 years of writing. There are many facets, angles, views or perspectives on truth. These perspectives on truth challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.-Ron Price with thanks to Harold Pinter, "Nobel Lecture: December 7th 2005," The Nobel Foundation, 2005.

I have often been asked
how my poetry came about.
I have tried to answer this,
but I cannot say. Nor can
I ever sum up my words.
I often try, again, again.
I have often said that
such and such is what
happened. That is what
these poems have said,
what I think they have done.

I believe that despite the odds
against us, we need unflinching,
unswerving, fierce intellectual,
determination to define the truth
of our lives and our societies.
It is a crucial obligation which
devolves upon us all.
It's mandatory, compulsory,
a sine qua non of our lives.
If such a determination is
not embodied in our vision
we have no hope of acquiring
human dignity: thanks Harold
for your life and work.(1)

1 Harold Pinter, "Nobel Lecture: December 7th 2005," The Nobel Foundation, 2005.


Ron Price
January 2nd 2006.

Subject: RE: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP (24 Dec 2008)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 04:55 AM

The papers have come through from Sidcup at last.......

Subject: RE: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP (24 Dec 2008)
From: number 6
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 10:25 AM

I am greatly saddened by this new.

biLL

Subject: RE: Obit: Harold Pinter RIP (24 Dec 2008)
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Dec 08 - 09:47 AM

Harold, if you had only asked, I have an extra lobe of liver I would have gladly loaned you. But alas Harold at 78 you left behind your granite footprint. You got it right. The sparks of inspiration we all have from time to time, you expanded throughout your life with disciplined practiced motivation that created a huge volume of art. Early success and renumeration probably helped but your hard work and sticktoitiveness is greatly admired as a key to your contribution to the world.

farewell flesh and hello to your carefully crafted eternal print...its time for my coffee break,