Pinter, Harold (Vol. 9) - Pinter, Harold 1930–

Pinter, Harold 1930–

Pinter, one of England's leading dramatists, has also written poems, short stories, screenplays, dramatic sketches, and criticism. In his plays there is an ever-present anxiety, a sense that nothing is certain. The seemingly meaningless conversation that is characteristic of his dramatic dialogue reveals a sense of the absurd akin to that of Beckett. The absurdity of atmosphere contrasts vividly to the naturalistic settings of his plays. (See also CLC, Vols. 1, 3, 6, and Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)

Pinter has chosen to be the great "mystifier," whose plays are famous (notoriously so, even to the point of parody) for their meaningful silences, their unanswered questions, their ambiguities, their symbolism admitting a multiplicity of interpretations. But this anarchic privilege of making his plays mean whatever one wants them to mean (traditionally, they are parables of "the human condition," taking...

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