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Death etc.
Throughout his life, playwright and political activist Harold Pinter has consistently cast light on the hypocrisy of conformist truths in pure and simple terms. Awarded the Wilfred Owen Prize in 2004 for his poetry condemning U.S. military intervention in Iraq, Mr. Pinter has succeeded as no other of his generation in combining his artistry with his political activism. Death etc. brings together Pinter’s most poignant and especially relevant writings in this time of war. From chilling psychological portraits of those who commit atrocities in the name of a higher power, to essays on the state-sponsored terrorism of present-day regimes, to solemn hymns commemorating the faceless masses that perish unrecognized, Mr. Pinter’s writings are as essential to the preservation of open debate as to our awareness of personal involvement in the fate of our global community.
144 pages, Paperback
First published September 20, 2005
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About the author
Harold Pinter
394 books777 followersHarold Pinter 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.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 30, 2025
Después de leer la primera obra, mis expectativas se fueron al subsuelo, pero conforme avancé a las siguientes, encontré propuestas interesantes dentro del activismo político del autor (que resuenan 20 años después todavía) y sobre todo contado de una manera muy peculiar.
Lo que fue "One for the Road" y "Ashes to Ashes" fueron mis predilectas. Eso sí, los poemas no me gustaron nada.
Lo que fue "One for the Road" y "Ashes to Ashes" fueron mis predilectas. Eso sí, los poemas no me gustaron nada.
December 31, 2019
Harold Pinter can write - there is no question of that. This book is a collection of his plays, poems, and other writings of a political bent. I wish I could say that Pinter had a clue regarding his political feelings, but I can't. The problem is that Pinter, much to my dismay, in Chomsky style rips into the British and American governments attributing evil to their actions much more than is realistic.
In New World Order, there are moments of dark, witty horror. Two men discussing a prisoner, being psychologically tortured/examined, say "I mean once - not too long ago - this man was a man of conviction, wasn't he, a man of principle. Now he's just a prick." In Press Conference, a Minister of the Government who could be strait out of any totalitarian regime says to the press "Critical dissent is acceptable - if it is left at home. My advice is - leave it at home. Keep it under the bed. With the piss pot." Both comments are good representations of the whole of that work.
Reading them - I thought of the Soviet Union, or China. Both short dramas are powerful, evoking Koestler's Darkness At Noon or something by Solzhenitsyn. Unfortunately, Pinter apparently doesn't concern himself with those regime's or the horrors they and their methods of psychological coercion have wrought upon the world. Instead, Pinter looks at the British, and especially the United States, as the true wielders of evil in this earth. In his letters and speeches collected in this book, there is so much falsehood and trash, Noam himself would be proud. To be sure, both governments have done wrong. The point is, both governments are prime examples to the world of what happens when our governments go wrong (we vote them out of office). We promote critical dissent. The downtrodden have an ability to seek justice. Unfortunately, I don't think Pinter would be able to see that. Read Pinter's other plays - don't read this book.
In New World Order, there are moments of dark, witty horror. Two men discussing a prisoner, being psychologically tortured/examined, say "I mean once - not too long ago - this man was a man of conviction, wasn't he, a man of principle. Now he's just a prick." In Press Conference, a Minister of the Government who could be strait out of any totalitarian regime says to the press "Critical dissent is acceptable - if it is left at home. My advice is - leave it at home. Keep it under the bed. With the piss pot." Both comments are good representations of the whole of that work.
Reading them - I thought of the Soviet Union, or China. Both short dramas are powerful, evoking Koestler's Darkness At Noon or something by Solzhenitsyn. Unfortunately, Pinter apparently doesn't concern himself with those regime's or the horrors they and their methods of psychological coercion have wrought upon the world. Instead, Pinter looks at the British, and especially the United States, as the true wielders of evil in this earth. In his letters and speeches collected in this book, there is so much falsehood and trash, Noam himself would be proud. To be sure, both governments have done wrong. The point is, both governments are prime examples to the world of what happens when our governments go wrong (we vote them out of office). We promote critical dissent. The downtrodden have an ability to seek justice. Unfortunately, I don't think Pinter would be able to see that. Read Pinter's other plays - don't read this book.
May 1, 2018
I tried and kept trying, but Mr. Pinter's work did not work for me.
February 2, 2013
Harold Pinter is an angry man.
My first experience of Pinter's work was a few years ago, at Illinois Wesleyan's Phoenix Theatre. It was a student-run production of A Slight Ache, and it was soul-crushing. Brilliantly paced, brilliantly acted – and brilliantly written. A while later, I came across Pinter's only novel, The Dwarfs. Like A Slight Ache, it was an early work, concerned with human relationships: the frailty of the ego and the impossibility of communication. Pinter is a terse writer, and he enjoys wringing his audience until they weep blood from their pores. I happen to enjoy this kind of authorial sadism, so these two works were just my thing.
I picked up Death etc. expecting – well, more of the same. I don't know if I checked the date of publication when I purchased it, and I certainly did not read the back cover description. A few days ago, scanning the spines of my books, looking for something to read, I picked this one up and read the back cover. I was intrigued: here I found Pinter described as someone who "has succeeded as no other of his generation in combining his artistry with his political activism." Very promising, indeed.
But Harold Pinter has become an angry man. The stylistic understatement of his earlier work is still apparent, but there is no subtlety to be found here. It's good, sometimes. And it's gut-wrenching, sometimes. And it was short, over before I could get entirely fed up with his relentlessly affronted monotone.
The problem with Pinter is not his politics or his desire to tell you about them. For that, he's admirable. There are plenty of authors, people with eyes and ears and good liberal inclinations that waste their time (and the time of their readers) being coy and cynical and oblique and ironical about the total moral corruption of our ostensible democracy – they know it's fucked up, and they know that we know that it's fucked up, and aside from a few snide jabs at the assholes at the top they see no reason to elaborate on the topic. They're a problem, too. They're comfortable, which might make them a bigger problem.
But Pinter's problem is a penis problem. In the various short plays contained in Death etc., there is a common theme of sexual violence, perpetrated by men against women. Men are sometimes the victims of some injustice or another, and it's the men who get to talk about these various injustices, but women are always being raped (not on-stage, but that's beside the point). The problem with all of this is that the women don't get to talk. Pinter doesn't give them voices. And never, ever, ever, are two women left alone in a room to talk to each other about the horrors of this fucked up sausage-fest of a world. There's a triangle here: the Bad Man (Bush, Blair, et al) commits atrocities against the Woman (the "faceless masses that perish unrecognized") and the Righteous Man looks on, angry but helpless. The Righteous Man wants to rape the Bad Man for raping the Woman, because then justice will be served and humanity will be able to proceed into a new age of peace and equality.
I understand where he's coming from. I understand the feeling of being a helpless onlooker in regards to the horrors committed by Bad Men in the name of freedom and peace and democracy. But the violence that seethes in the marrow of these poems, essays, and plays serves to mask the fact that there is no such thing as a Righteous Man looking on, angry and helpless. The violence implied in Pinter's own perspective is the same kind of violence he rails against: a violence that casts its target as a curious mixture of evil and inconvenience, a violence of pragmatism and propaganda. Pinter refuses to look inward, refuses to see how he is ultimately a perpetrator of a kind of phallocentric violence: indeed, a mirror image, a brother, to the men he vilifies.
My first experience of Pinter's work was a few years ago, at Illinois Wesleyan's Phoenix Theatre. It was a student-run production of A Slight Ache, and it was soul-crushing. Brilliantly paced, brilliantly acted – and brilliantly written. A while later, I came across Pinter's only novel, The Dwarfs. Like A Slight Ache, it was an early work, concerned with human relationships: the frailty of the ego and the impossibility of communication. Pinter is a terse writer, and he enjoys wringing his audience until they weep blood from their pores. I happen to enjoy this kind of authorial sadism, so these two works were just my thing.
I picked up Death etc. expecting – well, more of the same. I don't know if I checked the date of publication when I purchased it, and I certainly did not read the back cover description. A few days ago, scanning the spines of my books, looking for something to read, I picked this one up and read the back cover. I was intrigued: here I found Pinter described as someone who "has succeeded as no other of his generation in combining his artistry with his political activism." Very promising, indeed.
But Harold Pinter has become an angry man. The stylistic understatement of his earlier work is still apparent, but there is no subtlety to be found here. It's good, sometimes. And it's gut-wrenching, sometimes. And it was short, over before I could get entirely fed up with his relentlessly affronted monotone.
The problem with Pinter is not his politics or his desire to tell you about them. For that, he's admirable. There are plenty of authors, people with eyes and ears and good liberal inclinations that waste their time (and the time of their readers) being coy and cynical and oblique and ironical about the total moral corruption of our ostensible democracy – they know it's fucked up, and they know that we know that it's fucked up, and aside from a few snide jabs at the assholes at the top they see no reason to elaborate on the topic. They're a problem, too. They're comfortable, which might make them a bigger problem.
But Pinter's problem is a penis problem. In the various short plays contained in Death etc., there is a common theme of sexual violence, perpetrated by men against women. Men are sometimes the victims of some injustice or another, and it's the men who get to talk about these various injustices, but women are always being raped (not on-stage, but that's beside the point). The problem with all of this is that the women don't get to talk. Pinter doesn't give them voices. And never, ever, ever, are two women left alone in a room to talk to each other about the horrors of this fucked up sausage-fest of a world. There's a triangle here: the Bad Man (Bush, Blair, et al) commits atrocities against the Woman (the "faceless masses that perish unrecognized") and the Righteous Man looks on, angry but helpless. The Righteous Man wants to rape the Bad Man for raping the Woman, because then justice will be served and humanity will be able to proceed into a new age of peace and equality.
I understand where he's coming from. I understand the feeling of being a helpless onlooker in regards to the horrors committed by Bad Men in the name of freedom and peace and democracy. But the violence that seethes in the marrow of these poems, essays, and plays serves to mask the fact that there is no such thing as a Righteous Man looking on, angry and helpless. The violence implied in Pinter's own perspective is the same kind of violence he rails against: a violence that casts its target as a curious mixture of evil and inconvenience, a violence of pragmatism and propaganda. Pinter refuses to look inward, refuses to see how he is ultimately a perpetrator of a kind of phallocentric violence: indeed, a mirror image, a brother, to the men he vilifies.
June 25, 2008
While Pinter is one of my favorite playwrights, I can't understand why they decided to honor him with the Pulizer for this piece. While the plays are on par with his signature haunting works, the poems are mediocre at best and fall flat.
December 23, 2008
Pinter is a skilled writer, and I found some of the short plays and poems in this collection enjoyable enough that I did not want to give it only one star, but overall I find him distasteful.
September 12, 2008
won the pulitzer for this collection... 'nuff said.
October 8, 2010
Pinter, at his finest...
February 5, 2009
If Harold Pinter were a champagne, he would be extra brut.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews