Harold Pinter Has Died

Harold Pinter has died. Like many western artists, Pinter's crabbed anti-American leftism overwhelmed any aesthetic qualities his work may have had. His Nobel acceptance speech was an embarrassment; an old man's rant against a nation whose wealth and culture was big enough and open enough to accept and exalt Pinter's groundbreaking works. Even if Pinter was too twisted to stop himself, surely his wife - a literary figure in her own right - should have known enough to stop him. 

It's notable that Pinter's obituaries have to go back decades to find works that captured the public imagination. Eventually, people stopped going to see Pinter's plays because of their power, but simply because the great man had written a play. Attending a Pinter premiere became yet another obligation of the culturally dutiful. Perhaps leftist rants - like alcohol & drug abuse - become the refuge for fading literary lions who have lost their spark. 

Here's a more generous and even tempered look at Pinter's passing and legacy.