[Peace-discuss] Pinter Nobel speech

[Morton K. Brussel]

December 8, 2005

Playwright Takes a Prize and a Jab at U.S.

By SARAH LYALL
LONDON, Dec. 7 - The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize  
acceptance speech on Wednesday into a furious howl of outrage against  
American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only  
lied to justify waging war against Iraq but had also "supported and  
in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in  
the last 50 years.

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant,  
vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about  
them," Mr. Pinter said. "You have to hand it to America. It has  
exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while  
masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even  
witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

Sitting in a wheelchair, his lap covered by a blanket, his voice  
hoarse but unwavering, Mr. Pinter, 75, delivered his speech via a  
video recording that was played on Wednesday at the Swedish Academy  
in Stockholm. Doctors told him several years ago that he had cancer  
of the esophagus and recently ordered him not to travel to Stockholm  
for the speech, his publisher said.

The playwright, known in recent years as much for his fiery anti- 
Americanism as for his spare prose style and haunting, elliptical  
plays like "The Caretaker" and "The Homecoming," was awarded the $1.3  
million Nobel literature prize in October. In its citation, the  
Swedish Academy made little mention of his political views, saying  
only that he is known as a "fighter for human rights" whose stands  
are often "seen as controversial." It mostly focused on his work,  
saying that Mr. Pinter "uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle  
and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."

The literature prize has in recent years often gone to writers with  
left-wing ideologies. These include the European writers José  
Saramago of Portugal, Günter Grass of Germany and Dario Fo of Italy.

When he won the award, Mr. Pinter said he did not know if the  
academy, whose deliberations and reasoning are kept secret, had taken  
his politics into account. He clearly welcomed the platform the award  
gave him to bring his views, long expressed in Britain, to a larger  
audience.

Dressed in black, bristling with controlled fury, Mr. Pinter began by  
explaining the almost unconscious process he uses to write his plays.  
They start with an image, a word, a phrase, he said; the characters  
soon become "people with will and an individual sensibility of their  
own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate  
or distort."

"So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction," he  
continued, "a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give  
way under you, the author, at any time."

But while drama represents "the search for truth," Mr. Pinter said,  
politics works against truth, surrounding citizens with "a vast  
tapestry of lies" spun by politicians eager to cling to power.

Mr. Pinter attacked American foreign policy since World War II,  
saying that while the crimes of the Soviet Union had been well  
documented, those of the United States had not. "I put to you that  
the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road," he  
said. "Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it  
is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most  
saleable commodity is self-love."

He returned to the theme of language as an obscurer of reality,  
saying that American leaders use it to anesthetize the public. "It's  
a scintillating stratagem," Mr. Pinter said. "Language is actually  
employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people'  
provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to  
think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating  
your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very  
comfortable."

Accusing the United States of torturing terrorist suspects in  
Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, Mr. Pinter called the invasion of Iraq  
- for which he said Britain was also responsible - "a bandit act, an  
act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for  
the concept of international law." He called for Prime Minister Tony  
Blair to be tried before an international criminal court.

Mr. Pinter said it was the duty of the writer to hold an image up to  
scrutiny, and the duty of citizens "to define the real truth of our  
lives and our societies."

"If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision, we  
have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity  
of man," he said.


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