Complete Works: Volume 1

Complete Works #1

by Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter has long been acknowledged as one of the most influential playwrights in contemporary theatre; his arresting and original works have left a lasting imprint on the development of the stage and screen while delighting audiences around the world.
This, the first of four volumes, contains his first five plays, including The Birthday Party (1958), his first full-length drama; as well as two short stories—The Black and White and The Examination—both written before Pinter turned to the theatre. Pinter's exacting and complex use of language and the features that mark his "comedies of menace" are clearly realized in these plays and stories. His speech Writing for the Theatre introduces the volume and establishes the context for these early years.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Fiction, Classics, British Literature, Nobel Prize

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Harold 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.

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

From the introduction:

There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. This speech is speaking of a language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference. The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its place. When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

We have heard many times the tired, grimy phrase: 'Failure of communication'... and this phrase has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary. I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.

So Pinter writes banal dialogue that is elevated (or debased) to absurdity by detachment from meaningful context or significance. It looks like a conversation (people together talking), sounds like a conversation (the lines are speakable) and has conversational content, yet it fails to be a conversation. I'm sure that in a theatre, this is agreeably, stimulatingly(!) disturbing, but on the page I personally find it very dull. People make the same complaint about Beckett, but I like reading Beckett: he makes me laugh, whereas Pinter makes me feel depressed! Somehow he always succeeds in creating a mood of foreboding or impending doom or just horrible emptiness, which I associate with depression.

This is probably a very feeble complaint, proving that I've missed the point entirely. I am annoyed with Pinter for not having his characters say anything, for leaving everything unchallenged. I am annoyed by his annoying women. He says that he allows his characters to do as they please, but they are all fringes of the same poisonous void, and there is no comfort in them anywhere. However, I would go to see a play of his, to see actors embody and breathe life into these spectres, to warm them up, and show me how wrong I am.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are times I think that we, the British, should offer a heartfelt apology to the rest of the world for giving them Harold Pinter.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tedious and unfunny. Recommend it to everyone

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't seen a Pinter play since 1980 when I saw Betrayal with Roy Schneider and Blythe Danner. At the time the play seemed a bit flat in performance and I attributed Pinter's success as more to the times than his particular skills. In reading these early plays, I could not be wrong in my assessment. Pinter not only holds up after fifty years but the plays, having borne the test of time, take on new significance. The favorites, The Birthday Party and The Dumb waiter shine in this collection but I found the dialogue from A Slight Ache, concerning a husband and wife's interaction over a wasp that has invaded the breakfast to be as good as any Pinter wrote. I could not help reflecting that terms like "comedies of menace," or techniques like the infamous Pinter "pause,"hardly capture Pinter's contribution to modern literature.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great collection of plays from a true master of word play and dark drama - 8.5/10.

[Dimitris Passas (TapTheLine) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I'm not a theorist. I'm not an authoritative or reliable commentator on the dramatic scene, the social scene, any scene. I write plays when I can manage it, and that's all".

His work has been hailed by theatre scholars and critics as one of the most influential in the 20th century and he comprised an unretractable part of the canon of world dramaturgy since the 1960s. His death in 2008 elicited the sincere grief of the universe of dramatic arts and his impact on the theatrical phenomenon is still evident in the work of several playwrights of our times. Harold Pinter, a versatile artist who worked as an actor, director, and screenwriter besides being one of the most distinguished British dramatists of the previous one hundred years, is a controversial persona who has been awarded with several highly prestigious awards with the Nobel in Literature in 2005 constituting the capstone achievement of his career as a writer. Furthermore on 18 January, 2007, the French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, offered Pinter the Légion d'honneur, France's most illustrious civil honor, at a ceremony which was held in the French embassy in London. Titles such as The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, Betrayal, and The Dumb Waiter are still points of reference for the theatre writers around the world who often drew their inspiration from Pinter's acerbic, tragicomic dialogues that bring forth the element of the absurd, revealing itself in language and the disruptive communication between humans, as well as the existential agony of his characters who struggle to find their position within a hostile world, devoid of any kind of purpose or meaning.

This is the first volume in a quartet of collections that contain the totality of Pinter's work as a playwright, set in chronological order. The first book features seven plays: The Birthday Party, The Room, The Dumb Waiter, A Slight Ache, A Night Out, The Black and White, and The Examination. These works correspond to the early stage of Pinter's career and they were described by the critics as "comedies of menace". Swedish Academy gives a thorough definition for this type of play delineating it as "a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations. In a typical Pinter play, we meet people defending themselves against intrusion of their own impulses by entrenching themselves in a reduced and controlled existence". Owing its influences to the work of writers such as Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka, the comedy of menace balances between dark comedy and heavy existential drama, aiming to expose the primitive human emotions that arise when the individual loses his ability to make a proper distinction between reality and phantasy, between truth and falsehood and sees the world outstripped of the characteristics that the humans ascribe to it in order to make sense of his surroundings. Such examples are the one and only truth of philosophies and religions and the idea of a concrete common ground that constitutes the real world.

In the book's introduction, the reader has the opportunity to read the transcription of a speech that Pinter gave at the National Student Drama Festival in Bristol in 1962, where the British writer articulates his distrust on the concepts of a commonly accepted realm of the real and he argues that what we call reality is a rather plastic concept, a common ground that resembles quicksand: "A moment is sucked away and distorted, often even at the time of its birth. We will all interpret a common experience quite differently". He is also ambivalent regarding the potential of human language, "a highly ambiguous business", and he views speech as "a constant strategem to cover nakedness". This nakedness refers to the silence which exposes the limitations of language, a predominant theme in Pinter's corpus. That's why he crafts his dialogues in such a manner that the characters retain their independence and autonomy as they are not forced to speak and remain "inexpressive, giving little away, unreliable, elusive, evasive, obstructive, unwilling". What mainly makes Pinter stand out among the rest of playwrights is his use of silence and pause which earned him the supreme honor to "enter the language as an adjective to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: Pinteresque". Gradually, the term broadened to include Pinter's trademark use of enclosed spaces, minimal plots, and unpredictable dialogue that dominate his work as a whole.

During the 1960s, Pinter gained notoriety for his frequent and unique use of pause in his plays, an interruption in the free flow of speech that rings true to the ears of the audience because "human discourse is far from perfect and there are many times that we stop in order to formulate the next word that will come out from our mouths" as Nicolas Ephram Ryan Daniels argues in his article "What are Pinter's Pauses? And Other Pinteresque Devices". This rejection of a superficial perfection of interaction between humans makes Pinter's plays all the more realistic and he further emphasizes on the irrational aspect of human behavior that produces what is defined as "full-on silence" or "pregnant pauses", namely "a dead spot during which no word is uttered because the character has encountered a conflict so absurd that they have nothing to say". This endorsement of the preposterous and illogical proves that Pinter was very close to the writers of the Theatre of the Absurd. In her article "Transforming Dialogue Into Art", which was published in the Irish Times, Eileen Battersby names Pinter as "the heir to Beckett" and argues that it as him who juxtaposed "the surrealist manic absurdity of European theatre with the deadpan, laconic, non-communicative dialogue of living speech". Furthermore, Martin Esslin in his book The Theatre of the Absurd, names Pinter as "one of the most promising exponents of the theatre of the Absurd". The writers of the absurd agree with Pinter in several critical points that eventually shape the form of their artistic creation such as the embracement of a multiplicity of truths within the cosmos and the blurring of the dichotomy between real and imaginary, leading to a more chaotic worldview.

Another element that indicates Pinter's affinity to the representatives of absurdism is the unique employment of the comical aspect that is pervading their works. In their paper "Harold Pinter: The Absurdist-Existentialist Playwright", H. Aliakbari and F. Pourgiv write: "In a world where fantasy and the real are mixed up, tragic and comic are interwoven". Pinter himself had explicitly stated that "even tragedy is funny", however one must not conclude that the aim of his plays is to entertain and provoke the heartfelt laughter from the audience as the comedy in Pinter's universe "is double-edged: one side of which tickles, the other side cuts into the bones". There is nothing light or joyous regarding the themes of Pinter's plays as he probes into the angst of man who experiences profound feelings of discontent that reaches plain despair as he realizes that he is all alone inside a silent world without being able to even count on the others as any form of communication is doomed to fail due to the inherent flaws of human language. The realization by the conscious individual of his impotency and the confines of his own nature are a central theme in another school of thought that definitely affected Pinter's work: the Existentialists. The existential philosophers focus on the intrinsic lack of meaning that leaves the subject all alone and naked, facing his environment which becomes gradually more and more incomprehensible in a hopeless progression that cannot be interrupted unless a system of meaning emerges and save the man from his fateful situation.

The reason why I devoted so much space explaining Pinter's intellectual affinities to the theatre of the absurd and the Existentialists is that these kinships are more than obvious in the major plays of this first collection of Pinter's work. The Birthday Party, is his first full-length play and one of his most celebrated ones. The British writer uses the three-act-structure to narrate the story of a scared, isolated man, Stanley, who is residing in a secluded boarding house owned by a senior couple, Petey and Meg. Stanley's orderly, peaceful existence will be abruptly upended when two strangers, Goldberg and McCann arrive at the house looking for a shelter to spend a few nights. The arrival of the two visitors is perceived as an external intrusion by Stanley who never ventures out of the house and seems to be scared of the outside world and life in general. Plus, he seems to be reluctant to share details regarding his past, something that deems him suspicious to the eyes of the audience. In Stanley's birthday party, Goldberg and McCann will verbally assault Stanley accusing him for everything under the sun and the result is the young man's collapse as a result of nervous breakdown. In the end the two outsiders take Stanley with him presumably to go to a doctor and Petey chooses to hide the truth from Meg who has grown fond of her tenant during the past few months.

In The Birthday Party, Pinter deals with themes that recur in his plays such as guilt, as Stanley is portrayed as being ridden with remorse, order and chaos, the former manifested in Stanley's tedious everyday life and the latter in the invasion of the two mysterious guests that seem to have a hidden agenda, and finally the problem of ambiguity and meaninglessness that provides the dialogue with a surrealist quality which, in some parts, becomes so paradoxical that tests the patience of the reader. Pinter uses juxtapositions to accentuate the chaotic factor, in a way reminiscent of the works of the absurdist writers such as Ionesco, Adamov, and Genet and as Raymond Miller argues in his analysis of the play "the deliberate absurdity of the play distorts the line between the real world and illusion. It shows pointless existence". In The Room, Pinter follows, more or less, the same recipe and places his characters in an enclosed space, the titular room, which becomes a symbol of refuge, a place where its residents can isolate themselves from the dangers and adversities of the belligerent exterior world. In this play, the writer makes a comment on the unpredictability of life which denies any possibility for security for the individual. The finale is brutal and shocking, leaving the reader in awe, contemplating the heavy symbolism of the play which became the topic of severe criticism because of its overt use by Pinter. The Room was Pinter's debut as a playwright and perhaps some signs of immaturity regarding the subtlety of his style are to be expected when one takes into account his inexperience.

In The Dumb Waiter, Pinter places the only two characters of the play in the confines of a basement room where they sit and wait for the arrival of the man who they are going to kill. The titular dumb waiter refers to the food lift that keeps going up and down delivering food orders to the two protagonists, a purely ironic image that highlights the paradoxical character of the play . Pinter relays a great deal of stage directions compared to the writer's other works and through them the reader grasps crucial aspects concerning the characters' personalities and relationship dynamics even before the first line of dialogue is presented. Ben and Gus have opposing temperaments and their connection is marked by constant, meaningless interactions, with Gus being the one who continuously poses questions to Ben, irritating him and throwing him off course. The chasm between the intellectual level of the two protagonists is glaring as revealed in their conversation that is consumed by trivialities and incoherency. The setting of the play is highly reminiscent of Samuel Beckett's classic Waiting for Godot, an iconic absurdist text, as in both dramas, the characters engage in trite dialogue while expεcting the arrival of another party who keeps failing to show up. The unexpected and ironic, trademark tools of the Theatre of the Absurd, are ever-present in The Dumb Waiter, a title which can be interpreted in the context of the play if broken down to its two word components. "Dumb" is an immediate reference to the idiotic character of the communication between Gus and Ben, while the word "waiter", if taken literally, implies a man who is waiting for something or someone. The finale is startling and open to various interpretations as it is often the case in Pinter's plays.

Pinter as a person was a man of strong beliefs which he expressed openly, often evoking severe reactions by those offended by his observations and statements. He was outspoken against the foreign policy of the U.S. and it is worth mentioning that in 2005, the year in which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Pinter could not attend the ceremony as he was hospitalized. Nevertheless, he videotaped a 46-minute lecture titled "Art, Truth, and Politics" in which he vigorously attacked the government of the United States for a number of issues pertaining to their relations with less powerful countries of the world. He also chastised the American media for their coverage of the American involvement overseas. His lecture became a subject of a frenzied dispute between those who cheered Pinter's boldness and those who thought that he overstepped and talked about matters for which he was, more or less, ignorant. Pinter's polemic stance against every form of oppression and tyranny perhaps emanated from his difficult childhood during which he became the target of scolding due to his Jewish extraction. The early traumatic experiences of young Harold are perhaps to blame for his career as a writer in the sense that he was a man who has experienced first-hand exclusion and feelings of despair. Whatever the case, Harold Pinter is an artist who advanced the dramatic art and created original work that remains topical today and will be considered relevant for the decades to come. For those who are not keen on reading theatrical texts, there are plenty of movie and television adaptations, some of them are available free on Youtube, and perhaps they would be a more fitting starting point for those who wish to get acquainted with Harold Pinter's spirit. For those who are already familiar with the Pinteresque art, this book will give them the chance to trace the beginnings of his career as one of England's most prominent playwrights.

[Gregory Duke]

The Birthday Party - 5/5

The Room - 3.5/5

The Dumb Waiter - 4/5

A Slight Ache - 3.5/5

A Night Out - 3/5

"The Black and White"/"The Examination" -1.5/5 (these are leaden, humorless short stories)

Really loved reading this over the past week. Pinter's plays make me chuckle as much as they bemuse me and make me cower in fear. It's like you slowly watch reality collapse in on and itself, and you're left to sift through uncanny rubble. Every ending confuses in a satisfying manner. It's like Beckett and Lynch and Kafka and Mike Leigh morphed into one malevolent force.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously the first thing you notice about Pinter is his realistic dialogue between realistic charming characters. After reading a few of his plays you begin to see repetition in character styles, and you also begin to feel he is perhaps over doing it a bit: surely there must be some middle aged women that don't jabber on in an incessent nagging way, and surely not all sons live with their mothers. Clearly both of these are character types that are quite personal to him, and the over bearing mother/stifled son relationship is something he is particularly interested in - a relationship that is most clearly portrayed in 'A Night Out' - but when his plays are read in this perhaps slightly unnatural way of one after another it gets a bit tired.
That being said I still think Pinter deserves full credit for his efforts to portray the richness of everyday human irrationality, something that I can only really think of Mike Leigh as being better at.

There are many other recurring narrative devices - such as always starting his plays in a room with one person at a table the other making food - one narrative device I found a bit tiring is Pinter's insistence on having open, chilling, non-endings. To be fair to Pinter though, this is something that bothers me about modern literature in general – what's wrong with an ending; it's not real life it's a story.

This also undoubtedly has a large part to play in Pinter's genuine ability to disturb me: despite recognising the formula for a lot of the plays I was still honestly left feeling uneasy and disturbed for a good few hours after finishing both 'A Night Out' and 'The Birthday Party', this is an ability I have never come across in any other writer.

Overall, I would recommend reading 'A Night Out' and 'The Birthday Party' the most, they are perhaps the two most similar stories, but they are also the two most interesting and the two most powerful. Do not ask me why I think it is a good idea to read something that is so disturbing, perhaps just because it is nice to think of the real world as a comparatively safe and comfortable place for a change.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

برخی از نمایش نامه های این مجموعه که به دوران سوم و انتهایی نویسندگی پینتر مربوط است، به فارسی ترجمه نشده، یا من ندیده ام. اما بیشتر آثار او که به مکتب "تیاتر بیهودگی" منتسب است، مانند اتاق، جشن تولد، سرایدار و غیره، به فارسی ترجمه شده و اگرچه برخی از آنها بصورت کتاب منتشر نشده اند، اما همگی روی صحنه یا در تله ویزیون ملی ایران، اجرا شده اند.

هارولد پینتر با اولین نمایش نامه اش "اتاق" به مکتب "تیاتر بیهودگی" پیوست، و به سرعت کنار نام آوران این نوع تیاتر قرار گرفت. از "ناکجا آباد" (1974) به بعد، "یکی برای جاده"(1984)، "کوه زبان" (1988)، "نظم نوین جهانی"(1991) و ... خمیرمایه ی سیاسی آثارش جلوه ی بیشتری یافت، و مواضعش در مورد قشار جهان آزاد بر کوبا و نیکاراگوا، و بالاخره علیه آمریکا و انگلیس و جنگ عراق، خشمگینانه تر و تهاجمی تر شد. پینتر با اقتباس برخی نوشته هایش، تعدادی فیلم نامه هم نوشته که مشهورترین آنها "مستخدم" 1963 و "تصادف" اند که هر دو توسط "جوزف لوزی" ساخته شد، "بازگشت به خانه" 1964، "واسطه" 1970، خیانت 1978، "زن گروهبان فرانسوی" 1981 و...

در مورد پینتر و آثارش به اینجا مراجعه کنید
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...
در مورد "تیاتر ابزورد" اینجا را بخوانید
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[Jack Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The play that has struck me the most is The Hothouse. The characters are both ridiculous crackpots and banal minions of pernicious corruption. I also like the black comedy that throws dark light against a shadow play of high absurdity. A great example of the inmates running the asylum story, it's political relevance is no less timely or alarming than today.

[Brian O'Connell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This rating could go up. The Dumb Waiter and The Room are full five star masterpieces, and every other play at least has good elements—they just didn’t really come alive iln the page and I had to push myself to finish them. Still recognize and am compelled by Pinter’s vision and I expect they’ll all reward rereads.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps not for me

The characters in these works are personable and developed enough. But they never seem to do anything of moment or interest. The dialogue feels like it is pithy and the cadence reminds me of a monty Python sketch. Except its not funny. Perhaps I'm missing something in my read.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I've started to read plays that Beatrix Lehmann performed as part of my research. This was copy of the Birthday Party was the first I found. It was amusing as at the time they referred to Pinter as a "promising young playright" but the play was slated and according to the introduction it closed within a week. I must admit I was hoping for better. I had thought Pinter would be a more realistic writer but the characters came across as clichés rather than real people. Beatrix played an old woman in her 60s (although she was only in her mid 50s at the time of production). Her character managed an unsuccessful guest home and was confused much of the time but enjoyed attention, and wanting to party. It felt like a bit of a waste for her as there wasn't really much in it. The other characters were all men, shady types from out of town, a man with a past and Beatrix's useless husband. I can see why it didn't get the best reviews...

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

On occasion I've had friends that strike me as so similar that I've felt the need to introduce them to each other. Each time I assume that they'll become fast friends, and it never happens. There is some critical degree of sameness that makes people repellent to each other. When reading this book I wondered how Pinter would feel about Sam Shepard. Maybe I just don't know enough 20th century theater to appreciate their nuanced differences, but to me these plays, particularly "The Birthday Party" and "The Dumb Waiter", could have from the Shepard collections I've read and I don't think I would have noticed a difference. This similarity is all well and good, but the problem with both of the styles in these works is once I had read a few of them, the wild bounces in the character's actions became drably predictable.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember the first time I heard about Harold Pinter I was trying to write a highschool essay about Truth in Art. The essay was written in one night and by a panicked 17 year old who knew very little about anything, let alone Truth or Art. When I stumbled on this:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...
I thought, will they notice the difference between me and Pinter? Can't I just submit last year's Nobel lecture instead?

His plays are probably as wonderful as they're supposed to be, but reading them was becoming a bit of a bore. Sometimes I read them out loud until curious relatives knocked on the door wondering if I was okay.

YES, I am. I'm just reading Pinter's early works you fool.

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5/5) all depressing plays man the lack of communication makes me wanna scream but I know Pinter talked about that in the start and he wants to leave it at that. The birthday party was prob my fav, forgot that stanley received the broken drum for his birthday and that really brought it all crashing down. i feel his breakdown when he went round the table crashing the drum I feel that sooooo much

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is Pinteresque.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I am a pleb. I’ve never read Beckett. I saw Waiting for Godot once (once, believe me, was enough) and that experience was 100% the replica of reading this book. My records tell me that I bought this collection in 2016 as part of a job lot of famous plays, which included: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Pygmalion, The Playboy of the Western World, The Lady’s Not For Burning, and a few Shakespeares. I got around to Synge only last year, but most of the rest I read quickly. Interestingly, I kept putting off Pinter, and that’s even before I saw Godot.

These plays have a lot in common. They’re about horrible people being horrible. There’s exclusively naturalistic dialogue, even when – like in The Hothouse – some more obviously expositional dialogue would really have helped with the plot tension. Women are shrews. Men like to talk about football while being hitmen.

Although events happen in each play, they’re not the focus; Pinter appears to be attempting to evoke a vibe. Which, sure, he succeeds, only the vibe is mostly evocative of why don’t you just die, you piece of shit. So, low bar; reached. Pinter fits in perfectly with the rest of the white mid-cench males, whose main use of all their artistic skills is to whine about how men can’t beat up women when they feel like relieving some tension. As the revered Donald Trump would say, sad.

[T. Tokunaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

【Harold Pinter / Plays 1 (Faber and Faber, 1991)】

--Gus. Ben.
Ben. What?
Gus. What town are we in? I've forgotten.
Ben. I've told you. Birmingham. (P121, Dumb Waiter)

Harold Pinter getting a Nobel Prize in Literature sounds like Mr Bean getting one for "proving words are unnecessary, and also criticized Englishness as Lowan Atkinson in Blackadder." However, he did.

What's also stunning about these plays are, even though they're absurdist, they're not Camus' doll play with Caligula, Sartre's Legoland in No Exit, nonsensical deconstruction of Beckett and Ionesco. Characters (Stanley and Meg in The Birthday Party, or Flora in A Slight Ache even likes flower, which is also her name) are fashioning themselves and subverting the power dynamics as if they were from a transvestite comedy like As You Like It - but this time, it's a transvestite show of astro-suits and polo shirts, and they land on the Moon in the polo shirts and harbor with immense oxygen tank.

--Edward. ...The bastard isn't a matchseller at all. Curious I never realized that before. He's an imposter. ...(P163, 'A Slight Ache')

However, I should say that he wasn't really as impressive when he stage something neither in polo shirts nor astro-suits - for example, I can't really get why Mr. Roote in The Hothouse falls flat, despite Pinter's mastery. However, his wisecracks are still noteworthy, even in The Hothouse.

Roote. How do you know what mothers look like?
Lush. I had one myself. (P280, Act Two)

[Radhiyya Indra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full anxiety and no cathartic way out in sight. Loved every page! My ranking of each play/dramatic sketch:

1. The Birthday Party
Hands down takes the cake. Nothing beats the banality and sinister undertone of the whole thing; it's clear that this is one of Pinter's best (and most famous) creations.

2. The Dumb Waiter
Best duo ever to grace a piece of fiction, honestly!

3. The Hothouse
Even with the shitstorm that's going on, the office setting gives it such a formal feeling compared to Pinter's other plays, so when the rug is pulled out at the end nobody got the chance to scream. Absolutely inane and fucking hilarious.

4. The Room
Early Pinter rules. How does one write something like this and not succumb into total narcissism? No idea.

5. The Black and White
Came and went like your week has gone by in the blink of an eye. Feels like this influenced so many contemporary fiction writers like Gaiman.

6. The Examination
A play of dominance with zero (absolutely ZERO) setting and context like how did he pull this off?

7. A Night Out
Ah yes bring out the mommy boy.

8. A Slight Ache
I'm not sure whether this was a huge landmark in its time or not because surely there has been many iterations of this kind of plot, although Pinter has his own way of telling it.

[Mike Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because I remember my English teacher reading 'A Night Out' with us 26 years ago in my GCSE class. She kept shouting "Do you detect a sense of menace?" and had a spectacular voice for Mrs Stokes that has stuck with me ever since. As a result, I remember thinking it was pretty good so thought I'd re-read it as my knowledge of plays is somewhat lacking.

This is a good collection for someone to get an idea of what Pinter is about. He basically writes plays that feel a bit sinister all of the way through, contain a lot of odd and awkward dialogue, then end with something a little unexpected and shocking - often violence.

The collection differs in quality - as you would expect of any collection. I've given it a four star rating on the basis that I really enjoyed 'A Night Out', 'The Hothouse' and 'The Dumb Waiter'. The others are maybe a three star in my opinion, but still worth the time.

I'm now enjoying dipping in to some of the recorded productions available online.

[Claire Binkley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel a little bad for rating ALL SEVEN WORKS in this author's collection when it's true I only read The Room, the second play in this anthology, but that is the way the cookie crumbles. If I read all seven, I'd risk becoming closer to an English major, which I am not. The work from this volume I focused on discussed tea strength, a fact which I heartily approved.

You know, I have heard you can dip cookies into tea, but the times I have attempted this very feat, it's turned into a sopping mess that's turned my fingers into wretched filth which can't perform.

So I am waiting for Biden to win just like the rest of the world, just R&R'ing what literature I haven't already gotten to with extreme caution.

[Velichka · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is a rotten and vacuous essence in Pinter. Behind mundane dialogues which follow a stream of consciousness logic, there is a distasteful hatred, grumbling just for grumbling sake.

Often some self-conceited characters would proceed with monologues at a weaker and more vulnerable partners, playing out emotionally abusive and utterly senseless complaints. The Room completely confirmed that baseless rage (against a plain Black person?) is at the least tasteless and offensive.

His female characters are either annoying housewives or mothers, prostitutes or silly young women.

No, thank you, I am at a loss, how this person has won a Nobel prize and there is a theatre named after him. This has not aged well.

[Charlie Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow... That dude can write. If you wondered where David Mamet and Martin Mcdonagh learnt their distinctive styles, look no further.

Prepare to find the absurdity in everyday language. Prepare to find subtext within subtext. Prepare to find one of the greatest ever playwrights distinctive blend of comedy and menace.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating of three stars is an approximate average of the ratings I would have given each part of this collection, which is as follows: The Birthday Party (4), The Room (3), The Dumb Waiter (3), A Slight Ache (2), The Hothouse (2), A Night Out (2), The Black and White (2), The Examination (3).

[John Link · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read a lot more like a play than a book. But it was pretty good, I guess. I'd actually give it 4 stars if I was giving my true rating but I want to set a high standard for 4 star reviews because otherwise I feel like all my reviews would end up being either 4s or 5s.

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a really great collection. Pinter has a way for making really odd and cryptic scenarios that still manage to be emotionally arresting and darkly comedic. definitely need to read more of these.

[Vincent]

Making you feel depressed is one of the most beautiful aspects of Pinter's plays; I don't know why people complain that much about it. the uneasiness of his plays should be more appreciated in a world oppressed by far-right clowns.
they say his plays are not funny, but they are; only that they are filled with a menacing, uncomfortable, and strange humor, in which characters are dehumanized, annihilated, and faced by impeding doom, and violence.
I love the cruelty of his plays. totally recommended 😘

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read, watched, re-read and 'shared' aloud with friends and 'circles'. Perhaps Pinter and Paul Auster would have been both rivals and friends had they been contemporaries. Angst and insight.

[Elliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apart from the Dumb Waiter (****) and The Birthday Party (*****) the rest of this collection is exceedingly dull.