ARTicles vol. 2 i.3b: In His Own Words

“I believe that there are extremely powerful people in apartments in capital cities in all countries who are actually controlling events that are happening on the street in a number of very subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. But they don’t really bother to talk about it, because they know it’s happening and they know they have power.” (Harold Pinter in an interview with Mireia Aragay and Ramon Simó from the Universitat de Barcelona in 1996.) “To join an organization whose main purpose is mass-murder, whose conception of the true human values is absolutely nil, speeding on the utter degradation of a prematurely fatigued man, and whose result and indeed ambition is to destroy the world’s very, very precious life, is completely beyond my human understanding and moral conception.” (From Harold Pinter’s conscientious objector speech, written when he was nineteen.) “I’m convinced that what happens in my plays could happen anywhere, at any time, in any place, although the events may seem unfamiliar at first glance. If you press me for a definition, I’d say that what goes on in my plays is realistic, but what I’m doing is not realism.” (Pinter in “Writing for Myself.”) “Given a man in a room, he will sooner or later receive a visitor. … There is no guarantee, however, that he will possess a visiting card, with detailed information as to his last place of residence, last job, next job, number of dependents, etc. Nor, for the comfort of all, an identity card, nor a label on his chest. The desire for verification is understandable but cannot always be satisfied. There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. The thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false. The assumption that to verify what has happened and what is happening presents few problems I take to be inaccurate. A character on the stage who can present no convincing argument or information as to his past experience, his present behavior or his aspirations, nor give a comprehensive analysis of his motives is as legitimate and as worthy of attention as one who, alarmingly, can do all these things. The more acute the experience the less articulate its expression.” (Pinter in his program note for The Caretaker.) “I knew perfectly well that The Birthday Party and The Dumb Waiter, in my understanding then, were to do with states of affairs which could certainly be termed political, without any questions. … And Goldberg and McCann, I knew who they were and what they were up to.” (Interview with Mel Gussow in 1993.) “Goldberg and McCann? Dying, rotting, scabrous, the decayed spiders, the flower of our society. They know their way around. Our mentors. Our ancestry. Them. Fuck ’em.” (Pinter in a letter to Peter Wood, the director of the London premiere production of The Birthday Party.) “I suppose that Goldberg and McCann in The Birthday Party are regarded as an evil pair. But I’m very fond of them.” (Interview with Mel Gussow in 1971.) “I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is continual evasion, desperate rear-guard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming.” (Harold Pinter at the National Student Drama Festival, Bristol, 1962.)