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BIGGEST NEWS EVER
Prepare to have your world turned upside down:
Harold Pinter announced today that he has decided to abandon his career as a playwright in order to concentrate exclusively on politics.
I would like Harold Pinter to show me his poems from the ‘90s about Saddam Hussein. These anti-war people never seem to be answerable for the fact they didn’t lift a finger to protest the real war criminal, Mr. Hussein. In their eyes, history always seems to begin on March 19, 2003. Where were you before that, Mr. Pinter? Do you feel no responsibility for the people killed then while you looked the other way?
what is it with moonbats and poetry
Posted by Rachel Corrie's Flatmate on 2005 03 01 at 12:04 AM • permalink“I’ve written 29 plays. Isn’t that enough?” Yes, Harold, more than enough.
Posted by Urbs in Horto on 2005 03 01 at 12:13 AM • permalinkTHE LAST TO GO
[The scene is a nearly-deserted bar. At the bar sits HAROLD, holding a pint. A BARTENDER is washing glasses]
HAROLD: Another pint.
[BARTENDER silently pushes another across]
HAROLD: Interesting day. Real interesting.
[no response]
HAROLD: Y’know, it’s funny. People never like to look deeper inna things. I mean, here I am, I’m a playwright, poet. People, they see someone like that and just walk by, it’s like they don’t even notice. But it’s real interesting, the writer’s life. Real interesting.
[no response but the clink of glasses]
HAROLD: I mean, most people, they think I just siddown and write plays, all dull and conventional-like. But y’know, there are little games you can play.
BARTENDER: Closing in fifteen minutes.
HAROLD: For example - the whole leg-crossing bit. Wouldn’t find that in a play if writers were really the dull types everyone thinks we are. It was a joke, see? Wanted to see how long I could make the audience just sit there while nothing happened. That’s not the kind of joke a stockbroker or one of them rich city types could make.
[pause]
HAROLD: Of course, it’s a lot of work, playwrighting is. And nobody seems to appreciate you once you get older. Chew you up and spit you out, the industry does. Like factory work - there’s always fresh blood coming in, why should we have to look after the poor buggers who are past it?
BARTENDER: Tab is…eighty-five pounds seventy pence, sir. How will you be paying?
HAROLD: Course, I haven’t done much playwrighting lately. Takes it out of you, at my age. Done lots of poems, though - little things.
BARTENDER: How will you be paying, sir?
HAROLD: Sometimes I wonder…what will people remember longer, the poems or the plays? Course, I did a bit of activism too - amateur thing, really. Wonder if they’ll remember any of it. It’s the kind of thing people take for granted - like garbage collectors. They don’t care about it unless it disappears suddenly.
BARTENDER: Eighty-five pounds seventy.
HAROLD: Maybe I could switch to activism again. Something to do with my life.
BARTENDER: Closing in five minutes, and you owe eighty-five pounds seventy.
HAROLD: You think I’m paying for this? I just told you I’m a writer! What kind of a life do you think I’ve had? Begging for scraps - working myself to the bone to promote the Cause - writing plays none of you bastards cared about - and you have the nerve to get me for eighty-five pounds?
[BARTENDER takes baseball bat from under counter, glowers]
HAROLD [producing billfold]: You’ll pay for this when the Revolution comes. You and everyone like you! Trying to do over some poor sod of a benighted writer - that’s it! I’m turning to activism! THE WORLD WILL HEAR OF THIS, YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!!
[EXIT, followed by an enraged and bat-wielding BARTENDER]
“I’ve written 29 plays. Isn’t that enough?�
Probably. I’m not sure I could avoid seeing a 30th as well.
The man is no Tom Stoppard,,,
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 03 01 at 01:53 AM • permalinkHurry Up Harry
Looks like it’s turning winter,
for poor daft old Harold Pinter,
No more plays, but poems and rhymes,
His income’s down to nickels and dimes.Maybe he could be a media whore,
Like lefty lumpoid Mikey Moore-
Then he’d be on easy street,
Making moolah beating his meat.At least HST had the good grace,
To shoot himself in the face;
All these other old whiny pinko gits,
Hang around giving us the shits.Like Beatle Boots and Khe Sanh,
The sixties are so over, man.
Must be sad to have been so hip,
To now wind up on a saline drip.Those days are gone, and only missed,
By old farts when they’re pissed,
Like flares, tie-dye and protest folk-
So why don’t you just go and croak?Excellent, excellent work, sonetka. All that’s missing is Pinter calling the bartender “chum.” Because apparently, when HP calls you “chum,” you should sit up and take notice or something.
Posted by Joe Geoghegan on 2005 03 01 at 02:12 AM • permalinkHaving read some of his poems, I can’t think that it’s a wise career move.
Then it’s some time since I saw one of his plays.
I just followed rexie’s link above. Apparently Pinter has won the ‘Wilfred Owen Award for War Poetry.’ Is it just me, or was Wilfred Owen famous for, you know, poetry in another war? Like, nearly a hundred years ago? I’m an enormous fan of Wilfred Owen’s poetry (I like it a lot, not I’m fat), but doesn’t it seem a tiny bit presumptious to ascribe his name to the anti-war mood today, when he was dead before Iraq came into existence? I don’t like the sound of this Wilfred Owen Society. He was a great poet, not a man with future-vision.
I’ve had it, he grumbled, I’m done
This playwriting crap is no fun.
More pitiful than
An angry young man:
An angry old has-been - I’m one.An ignorant, self-righteous crank
Whose efforts at prose frankly stank;
Now I’ll stick to verse
At which I am worse.
You’ll all have the Bushies to thank.I am too important, he swore.
They cannot and will not ignore
My anti-war screeds
And narcissist needs.
I’m more than a glorified bore!Bushitler fears me - he’s right!
He stole all my pencils last night.
Rumsfeldian beams
Disrupt my dreams
And scramble my brains when I write.
But all that his minions devise,
The mind-rays and nightmares and lies,
Cannot confuse me –
Wait, did I just see
Vampire Slayer Rice with these eyes?steve
I quite agree about Wilfred Owen. Whatever his unknowable views on the War in Iraq might have been, he could be forgiven for his dove-like sentiments about the futility of war having served (and died) in the trenches as a young man. Unlike Pinter who has pontificated on the subject from a safe distance.
Also Owen could write:
Futility
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.Think how it wakes the seeds,—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?Sonetka,
You can probably assume that Bryla has had more works published, simply because anybody with an email address like .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) has probably been living on the public teat for years, producing reams of shitty, pointless literature - all paid for by you and me at the point of a gun.
Joseph Goebbles [sic] is an established literary figure? In what circle?
As a matter of fact I enjoy many works of literature, written by people of both left and right wing persuasions. Neither side has a monopoly on wankerdom, however I would say that those on the far left, like Mr Pinter, and far right, like Mr Goebbels, certainly make up the largess.
As for your statement…
Thanks for all those checques [sic], do you have any guns or cars for me now?
What ARE you on about, you silly person?
Murph - your limited intellect cannot comprehend the layers of depth contained in the deep thoughts of Bryla. His moon literature is far advanced beyond simple Earth concepts like plot, character, and motivation. That is why he gets checks from the government.
Sonetka - don’t fret, yer still me bonnie lass. (You ARE a lass, right?)
What ARE you on about, you silly person?
murph, I think it’s more of a case of what Bryla is on, not on about.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 03 02 at 03:26 AM • permalinkIs there any chance Pinter can get Le Carré as his running mate?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 03 02 at 09:18 PM • permalinkWhy stop with Le Carre, Richard? Let’s see some real solidarity from Harold’s friends and fellow travellers. Noam Chomsky calling it quits; mass resignations at the UN; Philip Adams Bob Brown and Margo Kingston departing en masse. Ah, well, we can dream.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2005 03 02 at 10:35 PM • permalinkMargo departs all the time, especially when something significant and inexplicable by her worldview happens in the real world.
She just keeps coming back.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 03 03 at 12:48 AM • permalinkThe theatre’s loss is now the political realm’s loss.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2005 03 04 at 12:25 PM • permalink
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DON’T PANIC PEOPLE!!!
But Pinter had a crumb of comfort for fans of his work. “I think I’ve stopped writing plays now, but I haven’t stopped writing poems”