Harold….……Pinter……….Is……….Dead

Or
None for the Road

Or
Exit Stage Left
(Props to Monty)
Harold Pinter, whose gift for finding the disturbing in everyday life rivals only the “what’s in your refrigerator that could kill you” mentality of the evening local news, has died at the age of 78 of esophageal cancer. Pinter’s dialogue was renowned for milking silence with dramatic pauses, so essentially Shatnerian delivery, minus the green-skinned babes and blinking array of lights makes a play Pinteresque. Pinter wrote more than 30 plays, including “The Birthday Party,” “The Caretaker,” “The Homecoming” and “Betrayal,” earning the 2005 Nobel Prize and great acclaim for his ability to capture the anxiety and ambiguity of modern life – the weasel under the cocktail cabinet,” as he called it – and his terse, hypnotic dialogue filled with gaping pauses and the prospect of imminent violence. With this forum, he denounced U.S. foreign policy for lying to justify war in Iraq and for supporting or creating every right-wing military dictatorship around the world in the last 50 years.