Pinter wins Nobel literary prize

[Rob W 0]

Pinter wins Nobel literary prize

 

Controversial British playwright and campaigner Harold Pinter has won the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature. Pinter, 75, whose plays include The Birthday Party and Betrayal, was announced as the winner of the $1.3m (£723,000) cash prize on Thursday.

 

The Nobel academy said Pinter's work "uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms".

 

The playwright is known for speaking out on issues like the war on Iraq. He is the first British winner since VS Naipaul in 2001. Pinter, widely regarded as the UK's greatest living playwright, is well-known for his left-wing political views. A critic of US and UK foreign policy, he has voiced opposition on a number of issues including the bombing of Afghanistan in 2001.

 

The prize announcement was made by Nobel permanent secretary Horace Engdahl in Stockholm. The academy's citation said: "Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles."

 

The author of more than 30 plays, Pinter also writes prose. His screenplays for film and television, include the 1981 movie The French Lieutenant's Woman based on John Fowles' novel. The Londoner, the son of a Jewish tailor, is also known for campaigning for human rights. Pinter, who celebrated his 75th birthday this week, was a vocal critic of the policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

 

He was diagnosed with cancer in 2002 but still voiced opposition to war on Iraq, joining other artists such as Blur and Ken Loach in sending a letter to Downing Street. Earlier this year he said he was giving up writing plays to focus on other forms of writing, including his poetry. "I'm using a lot of energy more specifically about political states of affairs, which I think are very worrying as things stand," he said. Last year he received the Wilfred Owen award for poetry for a collection of work criticising the war in Iraq.

 

Early experiences

 

"We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'," he said in a speech in March. During his youth Pinter experienced anti-Semitism, which he said had been important in his decision to become a dramatist. He was fined for being a conscientious objector in 1949 after refusing to do National Service.

 

He began a course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) but left after two terms. After a spell touring Ireland in a repertory company, Pinter made his playwrighting debut in 1957 with The Room.

 

Other early successes included The Birthday Party in 1958, The Caretaker in 1959 and The Homecoming in 1964. His most recent play, Remembrance Of Things Past, was published in 2000, and performed at London's National Theatre. In winning the Nobel prize, he joins a list of winners including Samuel Beckett, John Steinbeck, Sir Winston Churchill and TS Eliot.

 

Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre won the award in 1964 but declined it.

[Guest alex]

William Golding won it for 'Lord of the Flies' iirc.

[Rob W 0]

"Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre won the award in 1964 but declined it."

 

typical goal keeper.....................

[Guest alex]

"Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre won the award in 1964 but declined it."

 

typical goal keeper.....................

45573[/snapback]

Wasn't that Albert Camus?

[Rob W 0]

You're right

 

"To add to the unhappiness of his childhood was his realization when he was ten years old of his ugliness -- his being small and cross-eyed. He had been sporting long hair, and when his grandfather decided to bring him to a barber, it was then that he faced his true features. As to his smallness in stature, his grandfather used to blame this on his being a Sartre."

 

he obviously played as a striker for for Everton and ManU - sorry

[Guest alex]

Albert Camus played in a World Cup qualifier for Algeria iirc.

[Rob W 0]

spot on that man!!

 

" ALBERT CAMUS (1913-1960)

 

"A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images. "

Birthplace

Mondovi, Algeria

 

Education

Algiers University (philosophy)

 

Other jobs

Supported himself through college working in a car firm and shipping company; political journalist; active in French Resistance.

 

Did you know?

Goalkeeper for Algeria, Camus found the missing link between football and existentialism ("All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football").

 

--------------

 

Camus was a soccer fan. Later in life, and in his novel La Chute (The Fall, 1956,) Camus declared that the only places on earth where he felt really happy and relaxed were in a theatre building or in a football stadium. Young Albert played football for Racing Universitaire de’Alger from 1928-30, football remained a great passion throughout his life. He would also later claim that his entire sense of ethics was learned on the soccer pitch.

Edited October 13, 2005 by Rob W

[Guest alex]

spot on that man!!

 

" ALBERT CAMUS (1913-1960)

 

"A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images. "

Birthplace

Mondovi, Algeria

 

Education

Algiers University (philosophy)

 

Other jobs

Supported himself through college working in a car firm and shipping company; political journalist; active in French Resistance.

 

Did you know?

Goalkeeper for Algeria, Camus found the missing link between football and existentialism ("All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football").

45590[/snapback]

I've read a bit of Camus. His novels are canny but his philosophy is hard going (as you would expect I suppose).

[Rob W 0]

The Philosophers' Drinking Song

 

 

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant

Who was very rarely stable.

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar

Who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume

Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine

Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzche couldn't teach you

'Bout the raising of the wrist.

Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,

On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.

Plato, they say, could stick it away--

Half a crate of whisky every day.

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.

Hobbes was fond of his dram,

And René Descartes was a drunken fart.

'I drink, therefore I am.'

Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,

A lovely little thinker,

But a bugger when he's pissed.

[Guest alex]

And René Descartes was a drunken fart.

'I drink, therefore I am.'

 

That's my fav bit

[Rob W 0]

Indeed

 

Mind - I've always fancied going on the Karl Marx Drinking Tour of London - he and Engels used to hang out around the Tottenham Court Road area and drink like fish - attacked policemen, broke windows and street lights etc etc

[Guest alex]

Indeed

 

Mind - I've always fancied going on the Karl Marx Drinking Tour of London - he and Engels used to hang out around the Tottenham Court Road area and drink like fish - attacked policemen, broke windows and street lights etc etc

45647[/snapback]

Bloody lefties

[manc-mag 1]

[Guest alex]

45658[/snapback]

Philistine

[Lou 0]

I coulda gone to see one of his plays for free in Melbourne.... the guy who was in it just gave us tickets because he thought we looked like we wanted to see the show.

 

Unfortunately, our show beforehand ran over time - damn you, Charlie Pickering!! We DID get badges at the end of Charlie's show, though... so... I don't mind too much.

[DanTheMan 0]

I've read The Birthday Party, bloody mental play.

[Sicklee Sausage Roll 0]

I've read a few books by Camus, but never realised he used to play football.

 

Did he play outsider right?

[Rob W 0]

goalkeeper- like the late Pope = both totally mental

[Guest alex]

I've read a few books by Camus, but never realised he used to play football.

 

Did he play outsider right?

45792[/snapback]

Lame