Grove/Atlantic Ready for Pinter Nobel Prize Win

Harold Pinter

On Thursday, October 13, British playwright Harold Pinter was named the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2005. In announcing the award, the Swedish Academy praised the playwright for uncovering "the precipice under everyday prattle and forc[ing] entry into oppression's closed rooms."

Not surprisingly, at Grove/Atlantic, which publishes 25 Pinter titles, the mood was best described as one of excitement.

Both Morgan Entrekin, the company's president and publisher, and Eric Price, Grove's director of publicity, told BTW that they were "overjoyed" to hear Pinter took home the prize, especially since Grove Press had just published Pinter's Death, Etc. -- a collection of Pinter's plays, prose, and poetry on war, injustice, and death -- for the playwright's 75th birthday on Monday, October 10.

Entrekin, who noted the morning's prize announcement was a "great way to start the day," told BTW, "This is very timely, and will give Pinter a lot of attention, and deservedly so." He said he was pleased that the Academy specifically recognized Pinter as both playwright and as an activist.

Said Price, "That's very timely considering the antiwar movement [that is growing] here."

Price reported that all 25 Pinter titles are in print and "we're going to press on all that need inventory." The first printing of Death, Etc. was approximately 8,000, though the company has gone to press for an additional 25,000. In addition, Grove has gone back to press on three other Pinter titles: The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, and Betrayal. There will be a special edition boxed set of the four volumes, Price said.

Pinter, the son of a Jewish dressmaker, was born on October 10, 1930, in London, England, and growing up, "was met with expressions of anti-Semitism, and has indicated its importance for his becoming a dramatist," the Swedish Academy noted. Prior to penning his first play, Pinter chose a career in acting and, in 1948, he entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1951, he was accepted at the Central School of Speech and Drama and also earned a spot in Anew McMaster's Irish repertory company, which was famous for its performances of Shakespeare.

Pinter's playwrighting debut occurred in 1957 with The Room, which was presented in Bristol. Other early plays were The Birthday Party in 1957, though his breakthrough came with The Caretaker in 1959. "Harold Pinter is generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century," the Swedish Academy statement said. "That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: 'Pinteresque.'

"Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles. With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution. Pinter's drama was first perceived as a variation of absurd theater, but has later more aptly been characterized as 'comedy of menace,' a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations."