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Overview
Hailed by The New York Times as "one of the most important playwrights of our day." Harold Pinter is the author of The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, and The Caretaker -- just a few of his plays that have become seminal dramatic works. In Various Voices, Pinter presents his own selections from a prolific body of prose, poetry, and political writings. Through Various Voices the reader can trace Pinter's evolution, from his youthful explorations into the boundaries of his craft to the seasoned maturity of his later work. The wealth of material and multiplicity of forms demonstrate both Pinter's development as a writer and the stylistic precision he so consistently achieves outside the more familiar context of his plays.Synopsis
Hailed by The New York Times as "one of the most important playwrights of our day," Harold Pinter is the author of The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, and The Caretaker--just a few of his plays that have become seminal works in our literary canon. In Various Voices, Pinter presents his own selections from over fifty years of prose, poetry, and political writings, offering insight into the man and his oeuvre. Now in paperback, this edition includes recently written new poems and prose. His nonfiction selections span "A Note on Shakespeare" (1950) to "An Interview with Mireia Aragay" (1996); the short stories begin with "Kullus" (1949) and end with "Tess" (2000); and the poetry ranges from "School Life" (1948) to "They All Rang" (1999). The political writings illustrate the lucidity of Pinter's views on human-rights issues.
Publishers Weekly
Collecting many pieces previously unavailable stateside, this notable book finally gives the U.S. reader Pinter in the round--as playwright, poet, rebel, iconoclast, fiction writer, political activist and visionary. It's a motley anthology, including everything from interviews, speeches, pieces on cricket and manifestoes to a reminiscence of Samuel Beckett, an appreciation of Shakespeare and shoptalk on writing for stage and screen. And yet for every ephemeral selection, there are at least two of substance. The 10 short stories, most two pages in length, expose the mechanized rigidity of conventional lives with the same subversive humor, surreal leaps and compressed dramatic power that one finds in plays like The Birthday Party and The Homecoming. In his forceful political essays, Pinter, an unapologetic leftist, defends the Sandinista revolution as a progressive democratic movement, condemns Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. He blames the Thatcher regime for unleashing an avalanche of greed and corruption, and blasts British prime minister Tony Blair for restricting civil liberties and for cozying up to U.S. imperialism. The welcome gathering of 54 poems ranges from expressionistic lyrics to trenchant political verse. Mysterious, brooding, pregnant with open-ended metaphors, his poems grapple with death, love, loss, war, aging, the search for meaning; they sob for the absence of the sacred in a profane world. This valuable roundup exposes facets of the great playwright that will be unfamiliar to most American readers. (Mar.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Collecting many pieces previously unavailable stateside, this notable book finally gives the U.S. reader Pinter in the round--as playwright, poet, rebel, iconoclast, fiction writer, political activist and visionary. It's a motley anthology, including everything from interviews, speeches, pieces on cricket and manifestoes to a reminiscence of Samuel Beckett, an appreciation of Shakespeare and shoptalk on writing for stage and screen. And yet for every ephemeral selection, there are at least two of substance. The 10 short stories, most two pages in length, expose the mechanized rigidity of conventional lives with the same subversive humor, surreal leaps and compressed dramatic power that one finds in plays like The Birthday Party and The Homecoming. In his forceful political essays, Pinter, an unapologetic leftist, defends the Sandinista revolution as a progressive democratic movement, condemns Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. He blames the Thatcher regime for unleashing an avalanche of greed and corruption, and blasts British prime minister Tony Blair for restricting civil liberties and for cozying up to U.S. imperialism. The welcome gathering of 54 poems ranges from expressionistic lyrics to trenchant political verse. Mysterious, brooding, pregnant with open-ended metaphors, his poems grapple with death, love, loss, war, aging, the search for meaning; they sob for the absence of the sacred in a profane world. This valuable roundup exposes facets of the great playwright that will be unfamiliar to most American readers. (Mar.)Library Journal
Well known for his spare, iconoclastic plays, such as The Dumbwaiter, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, Pinter holds forth on his life in the theater, cricket, international politics, and love with rare wit and brutal rage. This collection of writings-prose, letters to editors, interviews, speeches, and poetry-gathered by Pinter ranges from wily descriptions of his role as playwright to loving homages to theater friends to scathing attacks on the U.S. government for its military interventions in countries such as Nicaragua and Iraq. In turns ironic (as when he follows a reference to the United States as "the world's `Dad' " with a challenge to "regard the breathtaking discrepancy between US government language and US government action with the absolute contempt it merits") and vulnerable ("Always where you are/ My touch to love you looks into your eyes"), this gathering represents Pinter's rigorous mind impassioned by deep care for his personal world and political reality. Fans of Pinter's plays will relish this broad sweep of his thinking, and newcomers to his work will be challenged and inspired. Recommended for larger theater and literature collections.--Rebecca Miller, "Library Journal"Andrew O'Hehir
...[S]tudents and fans of the playwriter -- author of enigmatic touchstones of modern drama...will find it indispensable.— The New York Times Book Review