Harold Pinter wins 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature

[NoJo]

Full text of his Nobel Lecture here: Art, Truth and Politics


I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

 

[Guest]

I read the full speech yesterday and thought of posting bits then didn't want to deal with Amicus . But I'm glad you did it.

Aside from the political bulk of it, his opening remarks about writing, characters, language are brilliant.

Perdita

 

[NoJo]

I read the full speech yesterday and thought of posting bits then didn't want to deal with Amicus . But I'm glad you did it.

Aside from the political bulk of it, his opening remarks about writing, characters, language are brilliant.

Perdita

My father, who was a personal acquaintance of his, once told him he didn't like his plays because they were too Pinteresque.

 

[Guest]

My father, who was a personal acquaintance of his, once told him he didn't like his plays because they were too Pinteresque.

That's a great line, I hope he shared it with Pinter (whose plays I honestly don't care for but whose character/persona I like and admire).

edit: I see he did tell him.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Thanks Joe. Were it not for you posting this and Dita endorsing it, I would never have read it.

 

[impressive]

Love this:

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

 

[NoJo]

Thanks Joe. Were it not for you posting this and Dita endorsing it, I would never have read it.

I'm certainly not endorsing what he's saying. But he's the Nobel Laureate, after all, and definitely is a brilliant wordsmith.

 

[Guest]

I endorse what he says. But I won't discuss it (here ).

Perdita

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I endorse what he says. But I won't discuss it (here ).

Perdita

LOL.

In defference to you, I'll forgo the scathing commentary I had been preparing.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I'm certainly not endorsing what he's saying. But he's the Nobel Laureate, after all, and definitely is a brilliant wordsmith.

He is a brilliant wordsmith and well versed in the propagandist's art too.

 

[NoJo]

Love this:

Pinter's plays are usually about power struggles, and the interstices within language.

Through everyday dialogue, epic battles are fought.


RICHARD: (sly) Lost something?
SALLY: (defensive) I'm looking for my hat.
RICHARD: Yes. You're looking for hat.

Sally sobs hysterically, Richard crosses to window.

 

[Guest]

In defference to you, I'll forgo the scathing commentary I had been preparing.

NOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!!!!! I love the way you scathe. Say what you will, I always learn from you.

I actually don't "endorse" anything but my tits.

Perdita

 

[NoJo]

NOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!!!!! I love the way you scathe. Say what you will, I always learn from you.

I actually don't "endorse" anything but my tits.

Perdita

Maybe you could use your tits to endorse Harold Pinter.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

NOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!!!!! I love the way you scathe. Say what you will, I always learn from you.

I actually don't "endorse" anything but my tits.

Perdita

LOL,

I'll endorse every inch of you and your mind hree or four times running

I'll go ahead and schthe then

 

[Guest]

Maybe you could use your tits to endorse Harold Pinter.

My bra just fell off.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Our Lauret says:
The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised.

The Sandanista were about as rational and civilized as the Pathet Lao. They engineered a marxist revolution and once in power, murdered just about everyone who they thought might disagree. And murder was just one of their civilized and rational actions.

--According to the Nicaraguan Commission of Jurists, the Sandinistas carried out over 8,000 political executions within three years of the revolution.

--Forced relocation of and murder of a minority population, the Miskitos Indians, according to Human Right's watch.

It goes on and on. A catalogue of the kind of abuses you get when a marxist rebellion succeds. State control is vital, and the method of choice has most often been, terror. All protertyis seized, those who own it are usually terrorized, if not killed out right. Order is then imposed with guns and usually, a secret police, al la the stazi or Gestapo.

One example, taken from an application for asylum:

In 1981, when Lopez-Galarza was 18, her neighbor, a member of the Sandinista military, accused her of supporting the counter-revolutionary contras, an accusation she attributes to her father's affiliation with the Somoza regime. Lopez-Galarza was taken from her home by Sandinista military officers to a police station, where she was imprisoned for 15 days. During that period, Lopez-Galarza was raped repeatedly, confined in a jail cell for long periods without food, forced to clean the bathrooms and floors of the men's jail cells, and subjected to other forms of physical abuse. Lopez-Galarza was eventually released.

Very civilized. Very rational. All around good guys those Sandinistas. Mass murder, forced migrations, secret police and instituionalized rape aside of course.

Our Lauret further says:

They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.


Stable? Not with an insurgency going on. Decent? Yeah, I guess if you're a Snadinista it's pretty decent, food, ammo, victims and a woman to rape now and again. And everyone was in the military. Forced conscription, sometimes of boys as young as 12. Pluralistic? Absolutely. All five members of the ruling Juanta had a vote. Can't get any more fair than that can you? Of course no one in the population had a say, but heck, we're talking a decent and civilized society here.

Moving right along as these things are irrelevant:

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

Love that justice system. An informer alleges on you and it's off for a few hours entertaining the troops if you're a woman. Generally they just shot the men on general principals.

Healthcare and education were raised, but the healthcare was financed by taxing everyone to the point they had nothing and the education was what most would kindly call indoctrination. Social untity? I agree, everyone was dependant on the black market to get basic supplies of food, Very unifying that.

He further says:

But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality.

I will assume this is the most egrigious kind of double talk, meaning there were no offical memorandum produced. Or perhaps he just thinks all the eye witness testimony is faked by shills paid by the americans to say this wonderful socialist utopia wasn't quite as rosy as the FLN propaganda claimed?

And then:

It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people

I think it's best here to just post an eye witness account of how united the people were behind their rational and civilized government.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=2384



In basic, this is a marvelously articulated Pravda article. the author has an axe to grind and he takes no prisoners. Of course, when that's the case, he also plays fast and loose withthe facts on the assumption no one has studied up on it and will call him.

I've studied the Sandinista regime a bit. rational and civilized are not words I would use to describe it. Of course, my defintion seems to be a little different than our esteemed speakers.

 

[Guest]

Go, Colly! And to think I hesitated cos of Amicus .

Of course I didn't automatically believe every fact Pinter wrote, but I still like what he said as illustration of his explications on Language. One could do it from 'the other side' too, methinks, using Pinter's own ideas on words!

Perdita

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Go, Colly! And to think I hesitated cos of Amicus .

Of course I didn't automatically believe every fact Pinter wrote, but I still like what he said as illustration of his explications on Language. One could do it from 'the other side' too, methinks, using Pinter's own ideas on words!

Perdita

I agree.

Edit: Sorry for the abbreviated answer, I went to get coffee and my brother decided to check the college B-ball schedule.

I was going to say it's very interesting to see someone articulaste and experienced with literary devices extoll something he holds dear. It's really stronger than the stuff written by people who have the same fierce devotion, but lack the skill.

 

[rgraham666]

I make no distinctions amongst horrors.

The differences to me between the Sandanistas and Pinochet are mere matters of aesthetics and body count.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I make no distinctions amongst horrors.

The differences to me between the Sandanistas and Pinochet are mere matters of aesthetics and body count.

Well,

If your contention is the atrocities of the Sandanistas are comperable to Pinochet or if it is they are not as bad as those of the Contras, you're in fairly open territoriy for debate.

If your contention is that the Sandanistas were, Intelligent, rational and civilized. I don't see much room there for debate. They were monsters and playing up their accomplishments does nothing to diminish their evils. But like so many left wingers, the only wrong doing they want to talk about is that done by right wingers. The same evils, done by left wingers falls under neccessary evils.

Ideological outrage is funny that way. What your guys do is permissible. But when "they" do it, it's an atrocity.

 

[rgraham666]

Well,

If your contention is the atrocities of the Sandanistas are comperable to Pinochet or if it is they are not as bad as those of the Contras, you're in fairly open territoriy for debate.

If your contention is that the Sandanistas were, Intelligent, rational and civilized. I don't see much room there for debate. They were monsters and playing up their accomplishments does nothing to diminish their evils. But like so many left wingers, the only wrong doing they want to talk about is that done by right wingers. The same evils, done by left wingers falls under neccessary evils.

Ideological outrage is funny that way. What your guys do is permissible. But when "they" do it, it's an atrocity.

Colleen, with all due respect, what the fuck are you talking about?

Did I say one nice thing about the Sandanistas? Shit no. They were ideological monsters. So fucking sure of themselves that they couldn't see anything wrong with the horror they inflicted.

Neither did Pinochet.

They're all of a piece to me.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colleen, with all due respect, what the fuck are you talking about?

Did I say one nice thing about the Sandanistas? Shit no. They were ideological monsters. So fucking sure of themselves that they couldn't see anything wrong with the horror they inflicted.

Neither did Pinochet.

They're all of a piece to me.

I was talking about the new Noble Lauret's speech. Pardon me for assuming that was what this thread was about.

 

[rgraham666]

I was talking about the new Noble Lauret's speech. Pardon me for assuming that was what this thread was about.

This was an apology.

I went back, reread and changed my mind.

I'm sorry, Colleen, but you made it quite clear that I was apologising or somehow trying to justify the actions of the Sandinistas. Which was not the case.

As I said, Pinochet, the Contras and the Sadinistas are of a single piece to me. Every other difference is simply aesthetic. Rather like comparing water moccasins and rattlesnakes.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

This was an apology.

I went back, reread and changed my mind.

I'm sorry, Colleen, but you made it quite clear that I was apologising or somehow trying to justify the actions of the Sandinistas. Which was not the case.

As I said, Pinochet, the Contras and the Sadinistas are of a single piece to me. Every other difference is simply aesthetic. Rather like comparing water moccasins and rattlesnakes.

If you will read the Lauret's speech, you will see the words, intelligent, reasonable and civilized are his own.

I said if you are comparing atrocitys (in your words they are all horrible) then there is room to debate.

I also said if you are saying what this man did, that they are reasonable, intelligent and civilized, then there is not.

At no point did I intimate you had defended the Sandanistas. I went out of the way to use his exact words, to show I was discussing his speech.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It's generally concede that a good part of the reason Pinter won the Prize was because of his well-known antipathy for the United States and especially its current foreign policy.

The US is not loved and no longer much respected by a large part of the world, including the men who give out the Nobels.