by
Michael Faulkner – January 11, 2009
On
December 24th 2008 Harold Pinter died. I must admit to being deeply saddened by
his passing. The obituaries were fulsome in their praise and respect for a man
who was widely regarded as Britain’s greatest living playwright. It is hard to
grasp the fact that the description is no longer accurate. For nearly fifty
years his unique contribution to the theatre had been acclaimed by critics and
audiences alike. Just as the cerebral and didactic plays of Shaw in the first half
of the twentieth century inspired the adjective Shavian, so, during the second half, the term Pinteresque came to describe the strange poetic power Pinter drew
from everyday conversation and brooding, pregnant silences. It may be said
without doubt that his reputation is secure and his work will endure as long as
the theatre survives.
The same
may be said of that other great English language playwright who died almost
four years ago: Arthur Miller. When Miller died in February 2005 I felt the
same sadness as on hearing of Pinter’s death just a few weeks ago. I am not a
student of the theatre, much less a theatre critic, and I do not propose to
compete with those whose knowledge and expertise I cannot match. I can only
reflect on what these writers have meant to me. I cannot even pretend to be a
regular theatre-goer. One reason for this is that the London West End theatres
have, for many years now, been swamped with musicals, some of which run for
years. At present, 50% of them are staging musicals. They have no attraction
for me. During the course of a year there may be half a dozen plays that I want
to see. This admission is not intended as a serious judgement of the
contemporary theatre. It is a subjective matter of taste.
The work
of the two playwrights differs greatly in style and content. Miller’s plays probed
deeply into the social fabric of post war American society, exposing the
illusory nature of the ‘American Dream’ and the devastating impact the end of
illusions could have on those who pursued it. These were the themes of his
earliest dramas such as All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. The allegorical
treatment of the McCarthyite witch-hunts in The
Crucible, was his greatest achievement. To my mind there is nothing elusive
about these plays. They are Ibsenian in the sense that that the dramatic
events being enacted have crucial antecedents of which audiences only become
aware as the play progresses, and that at the end of the drama they are compelled
to continue the imaginative pursuit of those events as they may, or may not,
have been resolved after the curtain has fallen.
Pinter’s
plays are compelling in a very different way. It is not difficult to understand
and identify with the characters Miller creates in such plays as All My Sons and Death of a Salesman even as they lead us to recoil from acts we may
consider reprehensible or irrational. Pinter’s characters in plays such as The Caretaker and The Homecoming, while readily recognisable as people of a type we
have all met, interact with each other in ways that seem bizarre. Dialogue,
though starkly naturalistic, and often hilariously funny, bespeaks a terrifying
alienation in which, it seems, communication is impossible. Our laughter is tinged
with guilt as we realise that what appear to be the most mundane interactions
are tragic – and, furthermore, that such alienated discourse may be
witnessed every day in real life. Pinter’s ‘pregnant silences’ speak as loudly
as his words.
Politics and Drama
Most of
Miller’s plays are obviously political in a way that most of Pinter’s are not.
Yet, Pinter, like Miller, was a political activist. His later plays such as Ashes to Ashes, One for the Road and Party Time do deal with torture and
state sponsored violence. Pinter was Miller’s junior by fifteen years, but
their backgrounds were in some ways similar. They were both Jewish. Miller,
whose childhood in New York was profoundly influenced by the impact on his
family of the Depression, was radicalised in the 1930s. Pinter, born in 1930,
grew up in London’s East End and became radicalised as a teenager after the war
by his experience of anti-Semitism during the resurgence of Mosley’s fascist
movement on London’s streets. The two men became friends. In 1985 these world
famous playwrights combined their efforts in the campaign for human rights when
they flew together to Turkey as representatives of the international writers’
association, Pen, of which Miller was president, to support the Turkish Peace
Association, whose leaders faced a show trial at the hands of the military
junta. Pinter and Miller, who vigorously defended the TPA, were thrown out of a
banquet at the U.S. embassy in honour of the Pen delegation.
There
were other, less observed, similarities in the lives of the two men. Both
married (for the second time in each case) women who were celebrities in their
own right. Miller was famously married to Marilyn Monroe and Pinter to Lady
Antonia Fraser, with whom he remained until his death. Both were at home within
their respective establishments. Both devoted part of their time to writing for
the cinema and both were noted for their strong support for actors. Miller, who
always had enthusiastic audiences in Britain, spent much time here in the 1990s
encouraging young actors and students at the Young Vic theatre. Pinter was
himself an accomplished actor who appeared in some of his own stage and film
productions.
The ‘Anti-Americans’
Both
Miller and Pinter have faced accusations that they were either ‘un-American’ or
‘anti-American’ – the two terms of abuse amount to the same thing. During
the late 1940s and early 1950s Miller’s plays, All My Sons, and Death of a
Salesman, were denounced as anti-American, communist propaganda. In 1956 he
faced jail for refusing to co-operate with HUAC. It is likely that his marriage
to Marilyn Monroe was the only thing that saved him from a jail sentence. For
the rest of his life he was a consistent opponent of U.S. support for
repressive regimes around the world. He opposed the Vietnam War and more
recently, the invasion of Iraq. In defiance of the U.S. government’s blockade,
in 2000 he visited Cuba and had a memorable meeting with Fidel Castro. To
apologists for U.S. foreign policy over the past decades, and particularly to
supporters of the Bush administration, Miller was obviously anti-American.
The same
accusation has been thrown at Pinter, though, curiously, his equally vociferous
opposition to British foreign policy has not led to charges that he was
anti-British. Pinter’s criticism of Blair and Bush pulled no punches. He
considered them both to be war criminals. This led those journalists and
politicians who supported the Iraq war to dismiss Pinter derisively as a
muddle-headed, naive anti-American. His critics included a handful of erstwhile
left-wing journalists who cheered Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Pinter didn’t
tolerate fools easily, and, during recent years under the strain of the encroaching
illness that was finally to kill him, he used every opportunity to speak out
against those responsible for launching wars of aggression and violating human
rights. To the obvious embarrassment of the Blair government and its
supporters, in 2005, the year of Arthur Miller’s death, Harold Pinter was
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Too ill to travel to Stockholm, he
recorded his acceptance speech which was played at the ceremony. Because it was
not widely publicised (the BBC virtually ignored it), it is worth quoting some
of hardest-hitting passages from the speech.
“As
every person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was
that Saddam Hussein possessed a
highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be
fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that
was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with
Al-Qa’ida and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of 11
September 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were
told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was
true. It was not true…….
The
United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees
any point about being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table
without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations,
international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and
irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a
lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.”
What
could those in power in the United States and Britain say to Arthur Miller and
Harold Pinter, probably the two greatest playwrights in the English language of
the second half of the twentieth century? When Miller died I remember wondering whether we would hear anything,
any word of appreciation for this great ambassador for all that was best in the
United States, from George W. Bush. Nothing. Stony silence.
Harold
Pinter’s death was announced by the BBC on Christmas Day, shortly before the
broadcast of the Queen’s message to the nation. In death, the playwright got a
last laugh by upstaging Her Majesty. Would there be any note of appreciation
from the Prime Minister at the passing of this, Britain’s greatest playwright? Not
surprisingly, there came not a word from 10 Downing Street.
Post
Script.
It has
just been announced that Pinter’s family would like there to be a memorial to
him placed in Westminster Abbey, at Poets Corner. Many famous playwrights,
poets and writers are buried or commemorated there. But, there is already opposition to it. A spokesman for the
Abbey is reported to have said that “Pinter’s anti-religious views mean that it
would not be appropriate.” A
rather surprising objection given that in addition to such as Chaucer, Dickens
and Hardy, Lord Byron and Shelley, hardly known for their piety, also have
plaques to their memory. 