...that his selection as a Nobel Prize winner for literature may have little to do with, well, his literature...from yesterday's New York Post :
...even Pinter yesterday wondered aloud whether he was being honored for his plays or for his politics: "I've been writing plays for about 50 years," he said. "But I am also very politically engaged and I am not at all sure to what extent that factor had anything to do with this award."
The Post then reports:
...he went on to blast the war in Iraq, which is pretty much par for the course for Pinter, whose past political rants included railing against "the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence."
The Swedish Academy, which awards the literature prize, and the Nobel Committee, which selects the winners of the other prizes, clearly share a common mindset: The most important criterion for selecting non-scientific Nobel laureates is the glibness with which they hurl invective at the United States.
More surprise, and more kudos:
He had not been among those identified as favorites for this year's prize, but the jury's choice met with immediate and widespread approval.
"I couldn't be happier. This is a brilliant choice," fellow British playwright David Hare said. Tom Stoppard called the award "wholly deserved."
Edward Albee, in a voicemail message, said, "He's a splendid writer and a good political activist. I can't think of a better choice."
David Hare, another America-hater, is best known for this quote: "The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism". Maybe that's why he approves of autocratic Mideast regimes, and is able to lump the United States, liberators of those enslaved by Hare's heroes, as "barbaric" as well. There's Nobel-winning logic for you!
Tom Stoppard: "It is better to be quotable than to be honest" - too bad the media doesn't realize this when they blindly quote this fool....
And here's Albee, another American whom loathes his country - he describes his plays " an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen. "
Must have been tough for the Nobel committee to chose - aw, heck, they all hate America, and they write somewhat legibly...give 'em all a prize!
UPDATE: Nobel-winning poetry sample from our man Pinter:
God Bless America
Here they go again, The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.
The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.
"Our" God smells of Death. I wonder, if he had said that about "Allah" - do you think he would have won a Nobel?
Link to this "poetry" at Annika's Journal: http://annika.mu.nu/archives/126088.html
New York Post editorial here: http://www.nypost.com/seven/10142005/postopinion/editorial/53481.htm
Yahoo news story here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20051014/ts_latimes/pintermasterofmenacingdramawinsnobelprize
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