SOURCE: Wikipedia, 2020-04-29 | Nobel Prize and Nobel_Lecture
See also: [Nobel Lecture (2005), Harold Pinter] Art, Truth and Politics
Harold Pinter CH CBE (10 October 1930 -- 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his own and others' works.
Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refusing national service as a conscientious objector. Subsequently, he continued training at the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in repertory theatre in Ireland and England. In 1956 he married actress Vivien Merchant and had a son, Daniel, born in 1958. He left Merchant in 1975 and married author Lady Antonia Fraser in 1980.
Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of The Room in 1957. His second play, The Birthday Party, closed after eight performances, but was enthusiastically reviewed by critic Harold Hobson. His early works were described by critics as "comedy of menace". Later plays such as No Man's Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978) became known as "memory plays". He appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and film. He also undertook a number of roles in works by other writers. He directed nearly 50 productions for stage, theatre and screen. Pinter received over 50 awards, prizes, and other honours, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005 and the French Légion d'honneur in 2007.
Despite frail health after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in December 2001, Pinter continued to act on stage and screen, last performing the title role of Samuel Beckett's one-act monologue Krapp's Last Tape, for the 50th anniversary season of the Royal Court Theatre, in October 2006. He died from liver cancer on 24 December 2008.
Main article: Art, Truth and Politics
On 13 October 2005, the Swedish Academy announced that it had decided to award the Nobel Prize in Literature for that year to Pinter, who "in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms". Its selection instigated some public controversy and criticism relating both to characteristics of Pinter's work and to his politics. When interviewed that day about his reaction to the announcement, Pinter said: "I was told today that one of the Sky channels said this morning that 'Harold Pinter is dead.' Then they changed their mind and said, 'No, he's won the Nobel prize.' So I've risen from the dead." The Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony and related events throughout Scandinavia took place in December 2005. After the Academy notified Pinter of his award, he had planned to travel to Stockholm to present his Nobel Lecture in person. In November, however, his doctor sent him to hospital and barred such travel, after a serious infection was diagnosed. Pinter's publisher, Stephen Page of Faber and Faber, accepted the Nobel Diploma and Nobel Medal at the Awards Ceremony in his place.
Although still being treated in hospital, Pinter videotaped his Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth and Politics", at a Channel 4 studio. It was projected on three large screens at the Swedish Academy on the evening of 7 December 2005, and transmitted on More 4 that same evening in the UK. The 46-minute lecture was introduced on television by David Hare. Later, the text and streaming video formats (without Hare's introduction) were posted on the Nobel Prize and Swedish Academy official websites. It has since been released as a DVD.
Pinter quoted Father John Metcalf speaking to Raymond Seitz, then Minister at the U.S. Embassy in London, "My parishioners [in Nicaragua] built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the U.S. government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity." Seitz responded, "Let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer." Pinter called the U.S. invasion of Iraq "an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public", and condemned the British government for its cooperation.
Pinter's lecture has been widely distributed by print and online media and has provoked much commentary and debate, with some commentators accusing Pinter of "anti-Americanism". In his Nobel Lecture, however, Pinter emphasises that he criticises policies and practices of American administrations (and those who voted for them), not all American citizens, many of whom he recognises as "demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions".
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