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| Harold Pinter, "Nasty Man" | |
 by Jamie Kirchick, October 8, 2007
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From yesterday's New York Times profile of Harold Pinter, we learn from the great playwright himself:
“When I was an actor in rep, I always played sinister parts. The directors always said, ‘If there’s a nasty man about, cast Harold Pinter.’”
These are accurate words from a charter member of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic and signatory to a petition to "Free" the Butcher of Belgrade, far more accurate than he knows. Perhaps Pinter's directors back in the days when he "trod the boards" in repertory saw him for what he actually was, and valued his preternatural ability to play thugs well because Pinter is himself a thug. Sadly, the once-great cause of Defending Slobo died when the Serbian fascist passed away from a heart attack in his prison cell at the Hague. But through his defense of Milosevic and his other political pursuits, it is quite clear that Pinter was not acting when he "played sinister parts" or mimicked "nasty" men.
The Nobel Committee further tarnished the reputation of its once-prestigious Prize for Literature when it awarded the thing to Pinter two years ago. His acceptance speech, broadcast from a television studio in London, was an embittered rant against the United States and its “systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless” crimes. It was little different from much of the tripe you read on left-wing blogs today, but there was something particularly noxious about Pinter's address, delivered as an acceptance of an award for literature, not politics (though Pinter was decent enough to acknowledge that "the Sandinistas weren't perfect.")
But of course, real authoritarianism is not just today ascendant, but already ensconced, in Great Britain and the United States:
“The whole brunt of the media and the government is to encourage people to be highly competitive and totally selfish and uncaring of others. It’s escalated, and there’s a basic indifference to human fate on the part of authoritarian systems, which I believe exists not in a faraway country necessarily but here and now in this country.”
So the existence of "authoritarian systems" in places like North Korea, Cuba, Sudan or some other "faraway country" is disputed, unclear, couched in the qualifying phrase "not...necessarily." But its existence in Britain (and, presumably, it's overlord, the United States) is something of which the 2005 recipient of the Nobel laureate is quite sure.
It is too much to expect even the slightest bit of moralizing from the Times writer offering this breathless portrayal of Pinter. Maybe she's trying to tell us something in her title, "Still Pinteresque," which, as the story lets us know, the Financial Times once-referred to as "full of dark hints and pregnant suggestions, with the audience left uncertain as to what to conclude.” While this may be an apt description of Pinter's dramatic work, it certainly does not illuminate Pinter's rather blunt and unsophisticated politics, the motivations and meanings of which are neither hinted at nor uncertain, but actually quite clear. In the realm of the political, "Pinteresque" can be defined as a rancid, self-loathing for the West, with the corollary of useful idiocy expressed via support for totalitarian mass murderers with anti-America street cred.
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James Kirchick is an assistant editor of The New Republic and is a columnist for the Washington Blade and Washington Examiner. More... |
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Connors
"While this may be an apt
"While this may be an apt description of Pinter's dramatic work..."
Ha ha. You wouldn't know, of course, having never read him...and yet that doesn't stop you from publishing an article about the man.
Your post also presumes that you've lived in either Cuban, Sudan and North Korea, and can tell us all about it.
Pinter, like most educated and experienced people, criticizes the things he knows about, not the things he doesn't.
You look about, hmmm, I don't know, 25 years old. You've probably never lived outside of America (and who knows? probably never even traveled outside of America either). Your opinions sound as if they've been cut and pasted from books and better-known writers.
Do you have any thoughts based on your own experiences to offer us? Or are we to forever to be subjected to yet more cliched right-wing propaganda?
Michael Weiss
Actually...
Jamie has
lived in*traveled to Zimbabwe and reported numerous times on the depredations of Mugabe's regime:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070305&s=kirchick030807
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070409&s=kirchick041007
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-kirchick30sep30,0,3297629.stor...
* See Jamie's post below.
Connors
how long?
I'd like to know how long Jamie lived in Zimbabwe. I couldn't read the full articles at TNR because I am not a member, but all it said was that he reported from there. So, Jamie, how long were you there for?
I write this not as supporter of Mugabe, but simply as a skeptic of Kirchick and his what appear to be heavily biased renderings.
Jamie Kirchick
Zimbabwe
Dear "Connors,"
I have spent precious little time in Zimbabwe, only a few days last year, as it is illegal for foreign journalists to work there. Punishments range from deportation to spending weeks in prison--- Chikirubi State Prison is not reputed to be a nice place I can assure you. The last foreign journalist to work in Zimbabwe, The Guardian's Andrew Meldrum, was deported in 2003:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/subsectionmenu/0,,960624,00.html
I did, however, spend a lot of time interviewing Zimbabwean refugees living in Johannesburg, and what they told me was confirmed by what I saw in their homeland.
I plan to return next year for the presidential/parliamentary elections, though that assignment might be a bit tough to accomplish as I was recently denounced--by name--in the Zimbabwean state newspaper:
http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=23331&livedate=8/18/2007%2012:00:00%20AM&cat=10
My "renderings" of Zimbabwe are hardly "right-wing" or "heavily biased," and are frequently reprinted on Zimbabwean exile news sites. Unless you too, like Mugabe, believe that those black Zimbabweans who criticize him are merely "British stooges."
I hope this satisfies your query.
Best,
Jamie Kirchick
Connors
"I hope this satisfies your
"I hope this satisfies your query."
It does. And I look forward to your future reports. Just be weary of what exiles have to say. Exiles, by rule, always have an axe to grind. Good luck and stay safe...
Why do you put my name in quotations? My name is Connors; I'm sorry if that bothers you.
Connors
right wing!
I guess I wasn't the only person to think so. From the story you linked to, Jamie:
"The writer then brings in the American angle by way of a right wing James Kirchick of the New Republican magazine"
Funny, obviously, how they called it the New Republican. The New Republic is a pretty terrible magazine, and how could it not be headed up by Martin Peretz? I remember the Lee Siegel days, and an article he wrote claiming that Larry David and his show Curb Your Enthusiasm were not funny. This might've been a low point in any other rag, but just run of the mill for TNR.
Adam Shprintzen
Solid logic....Pinter is a
Solid logic....Pinter is a famed playwright, thus he has some significant insight into world affairs. Huh, not sure I follow that, I'll take the New Republic any day over the vitroilic ramblings of an angry, confused man.
Connors
"Pinter is a famed
"Pinter is a famed playwright, thus he has some significant insight into world affairs."
Nobody, as far as I know, ever claimed that, so you're just making shit it up, which I suppose is par for your course.
I was criticizing Jamie for the hatchet job he has produced here against a man he has obviously never read, aside from certain snippets from a speech.
Adam Shprintzen
Wow, testy testy..
A little defensive, aren't we Connors? Particularly when defending someone who himself defended the actions of a murderous, fascistic dictator.
To quote you:
"Pinter, like most educated and experienced people, criticizes the things he knows about, not the things he doesn't."
and
"Do you have any thoughts based on your own experiences to offer us? Or are we to forever to be subjected to yet more cliched right-wing propaganda?"
Yet in those two sentences isn't there an inherent contradiction? Pinter speaks out/about any number of subjects that he has no more knowledge/experience about than you or I, yet because of his status as a playwright he is given a platform and presumably some level of respect. So, yes, the inference is that you believe that Pinter either a) deserves that honor or b) has some special knowledge on world affairs that you or I do not have. (this goes beyond your presumptions about Jaime's knowledge of Pinter, and assumptions that because he is younger than you that his experience is somehow to be questioned).
But at least you make a cogent argument by labeling him "cliched" and "right-wing" without ever having read Jamie's work; otherwise you would understand that his writings at TNR are neither.
Robert Mugabe
Pinter has mad cow disease
Pinter has mad cow disease from eating too many cheeseburgers. British beef is potent stuff
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