Pinter, Harold

 Pinter, Harold. The Room. 1957. In Pinter, The Room and The Dumb Waiter.
_____. The Birthday Party. Drama. 1958.
_____. The Caretaker. Drama. 1959.
_____. The Dumb Waiter. Drama. First performed 1960.
_____. A Slight Ache. Drama. In Pinter, A Slight Ache. A Night Out. London: Methuen, 1961.
_____. The Hothouse. Drama. In Pinter, Plays One. London: Faber and Faber.
_____. A Night Out.  Drama. In Pinter, A Slight Ache. A Night Out. London: Methuen, 1961.
_____. The Black and White. In Pinter, Plays One. London: Faber and Faber.
_____. The Examination. London: Methuen, 1963.
_____. The Dwarfs. In Pinter, Plays Two. London: Faber and Faber.
_____. The Lover. Drama. 1963. In Pinter, The Collection and The Lover. (Methuen's Modern Plays).
_____. Tea Party. TV drama. 1965.
_____. The Collection. Drama. In Pinter, The Collection and The Lover. (Methuen's Modern Plays).
_____. Night School. Drama.  In Pinter,  Plays Two. London: Faber and Faber.
_____. The Homecoming. Drama. 1965. (Methuen's Modern Plays). London: Methuen.
_____. The Basement. TV drama. 1967.
_____. Landscape. Drama. First broadcast BBC, 25 April 1968. 1st staged by the RSC, Aldsych Theatre, London , 2 July 1969. Dir. Peter Hall.
_____. The Go-Between. Screenplay, based on L. P. Hartley's novel. 1969.
_____. Silence. 1969. In Pinter, Plays: Three. London: Faber and Faber, 1991. 189-209.
_____. Old Times. Drama. London: Methuen, 1971.
_____. No Man's Land. TV drama. 1975.
_____. Betrayal. TV drama. 1978.
_____. Poems and Prose 1949-1977. London: Eyre Methuen, 1978.
_____. The Proust Screenplay. (= A la Recherche du Temps Perdu). Screenplay, based on Marcel Proust's novel. 1978.
_____. Mountain Language. New York: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988.
_____. One for the Road. Drama. In Pinter, Plays Four. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.
_____. Victoria Station. In Pinter, Plays Four. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.
_____. Party Time. Drama.
_____. Request Stop. Drama. In Pinter, Plays Two. London: Faber and Faber.
_____. Last to Go. Drama. In Pinter, Plays Two. London: Faber and Faber.
_____. Special Offer. Drama. In Pinter, Plays Two. London: Faber and Faber.
_____. Trouble in the Works. Drama. In Pinter, Plays Two. London: Faber and Faber.
_____. Family Voices. London: Next Editions / Faber, 1981.
_____. The French Lieutenant's Woman. Screenplay based on John Fowles' novel. 1982.
_____. A Kind of Alaska. Drama. 1982.
_____. Night. Drama. In Pinter, Plays Three. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
_____. That's Your Trouble. Drama. In Pinter, Plays Three. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
_____. That's All. In Pinter, Plays Three. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
_____. Applicant. In Pinter, Plays Three. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
_____. Interview. In Pinter, Plays Three. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
_____. Dialogue for Three. In Pinter, Plays Three. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
_____. Collected Poems and Prose. London: Methuen, 1986.
_____. Monologue. In Pinter, Plays Four. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.
_____. The Heat of the Day. Screenplay.
_____. The Comfort of Strangers and Other Screenplays (Reunion, Victory, Turtle Diary).
_____. The Trial. Screenplay.
_____. Moonlight. Drama. 1993.
_____. Ashes to Ashes. Drama. 1996.
_____. Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-1998.
_____. "Art, Truth, and Politics." Nobel Lecture, Dec. 2005. Nobelprize.org
    http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
    2005-12-09
_____. "Arte, verdad y política. Trans. José Ángel García Landa and Beatriz Penas Ibáñez. In Fírgoa: Universidade pública 9 Dec. 2005.
http://firgoa.usc.es/drupal/node/24005
    2005-12-09

From the Oxford Companion to English Literature:

Harold Pinter (1930-[2008]), poet and playwright, born in East London, the son of a Jewish tailor, and educated at Hackney Downs Grammar School. He began to publish poetry in periodicals before he was 20, then became a professional actor, working mainly in repertory. 

His first play, The Room, was performed in Bristol in 1957, followed in 1958 by a London production of The Birthday Party, in which Stanley, an out-of-work pianist in a seaside boarding house, is mysteriously threatened and taken over by two intruders, an Irishman and a Jew, who present him with a Kafkaesque indictment of unexplained crimes. 

Pinter's distinctive voice was soon recognized, and many critical and commercial successes followed, including The Caretaker (1960), The Lover (1963), The Homecoming (1965), Old Times (1971), and No Man's Land (1975). Betrayal (1978; film, 1982) is an ironic tragedy which ends in beginning and traces with a reversed chronology the development of a love affair between a man and his best friend's wife. Later plays include A Kind of Alaska (1982), based on a work by O. Sacks, One for the Road (1984), Mountain Language (1988), Party Time (1991), and Ashes to Ashes (1996, a short drama of the Holocaust). 

Pinter's gift for portraying, by means of dialogue which realistically produces the nuances of colloquial speech, the difficulties of communication and the many layers of meaning in language, pause, and silence, have created a style labelled by the popular imagination as 'Pinteresque', and his themes —nameless menace, erotic fantasy, obsession and jealousy, family hatreds, and mental disturbance—are equally recognizable. 

Pinter has also written extensively for radio and television, directed plays, and written several screenplays, which include versions of L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between (1969), A la recherche du temps perdu (1978) and J. Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (1982). Poems and Prose, 1947-1977 was published in 1978. See The Life and Work of Harold Pinter (1996) by Michael Billington.


The Caretaker, a play by H. Pinter, performed and published in 1960.

One of Pinter's characteristically enigmatic dramas, it is built on the interaction of three characters, the tramp Davies and the brothers Aston and Mick. Aston has rescued Davies from a brawl and brought him back to a junk-filled room, in which he offers Davies a bed and, eventually, an ill-defined post as caretaker. The characters reveal themselves in inconsequential dialogue and obsessional monologue. Davies is worried about his papers, the blacks, gas leaks, and getting to Sidcup; Aston reveals that he has suffered headaches ever since undergoing electric shock treatment for his 'complaint'; Mick, the youngest, is alternately bully, cajoler, and materialist visionary, with dreams of transforming the room into a fashionable penthouse. In the end both brothers turn on Davies and evict him. The dialogue is at once naturalistic and surreal; the litany of London place names (Finsbury Park, Shepherd's Bush, Putney) and of decorator's jargon (charcoal-grey worktops, teak veneer) serves to highlight the no man's-land in which the characters in fact meet.




The Homecoming, a play by H. Pinter, performed and published 1965.

A black Freudian family drama, the play presents the return to his north London home and ostentatiously womanless family of Teddy, an academic, and his wife of six years, Ruth, once a photographic model. The patriarch, Mac, a butcher, is alternately violent and cringing in manner, and the other two sons, Lenny and Joey, in a very short time make sexual overtures to Ruth, who calmly accepts them; by the end of the play, Teddy has decided to leave her with the family, who intend to establish her as a professional prostitute. The tone is dark, erotic, and threatening; the shocking and the banal are sharply juxtaposed throughout. Ruth's acceptance of her role as mother, mistress, and possibly breadwinner for her new family, and her rejection of her husband, are intricately connected with the enigmatic figure of the long-dead mother. Jessie, who is both reviled and idolized by her survivors.

Pinter brinda por los "Viejos tiempos"