Welcome to the Harold Pinter Society web pages
"I
might even show you my photograph album. You might
even see a face in it which might remind you of your own,
of what you once were. You might see faces of others,
in shadow, or cheeks of others, turning, or jaws, or backs
of necks, or eyes, dark under hats, which remind you of
others, whom you once knew, whom you thought long dead, but
from whom you will still receive a sidelong glance, if you
can face the good ghost. Allow the love of the good
ghost. They possess all that emotion...
trapped. Bow to it. It will assuredly never
release them, but who knows... what relief... it may give
to them... who knows how they may quicken... in their
chains, in their glass jars. You think it cruel... to
quicken them, when they are fixed, imprisoned? No...
no. Deeply, deeply, they wish to respond to your
touch, to your look, and when you smile, their joy... is
unbounded. And so I say to you, tender the dead, as
you yourself would be tendered, now, in what you would
describe as your life."
(Harold
Pinter,
No Man's Land,
1974. Words requested by the playwright to be spoken at his
funeral)
Born in the East End of London, England in 1930, playwright Harold Pinter entertained, challenged and perturbed audiences since his first full-length play, The Birthday Party, was produced in London in 1958. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died on 24 December 2008.
Reuters - Harold Pinter dies
ITN news - Harold Pinter dies
Sky News - Harold Pinter dies at 78
The Harold Pinter Society is dedicated to studying, celebrating, and appraising the works of this prolific and frequently enigmatic writer. For almost twenty years, the society has published The Pinter Review - Collected Essays. As an Allied Organization of the Modern Language Association of America, the Harold Pinter Society organizes a business meeting, programs in which scholars present papers, and related social events at the MLA annual convention.
The board of the Harold
Pinter Society is currently:
President
Ann C. Hall
Vice-President
Mark Taylor-Batty
Treasurer
Judith Roof
Download the October 2008 edition of the newsletter - HP1008Newsletter
Standing call for papers: The Pinter Society hosts panels annually at the MLA and the MMLA conventions. Details of these will be posted in the Events page when they are confirmed. For details of how to submit articles to The Pinter Review please go to that page on the site.
Subscribe to The British Library Pinter Archive blog to get regular updates on the progress made in cataloguing the acquisition of Pinter's letters, notes and manuscripts
The Pinter Society Website is designed and maintained by Mark Taylor-Batty. Last updated 1 January 2009.
Goldberg and McCann (The
Birthday Party)