Soon after my last comment on Harold Pinter comes John Lahr’s New Yorker profile — mostly a close reading of the play “The Homecoming,” though Lahr touches on Pinter’s politics at the end:
…he has lent the muscle of his voice to a variety of causes, among them the Sandinistas, the freedom of Slobodan Milosevic, the end of the Iraq war, and the trial of Tony Blair as a war criminal.
It’s amazing how Lahr doesn’t lift a finger to unpack the screaming irony. The freedom of Slobodan Milosevic. The trial of Tony Blair as a war criminal. Pinter is not opposed to war crimes as such, you see. Milosevic, the overseer of an anti-Muslim genocide, put on trial by an internationally recognized and legitimate court, should have gone free. But as for Tony Blair, no judgment is too harsh, no words too hysterical.
And somehow Pinter winds up in the moral plus-column: “…the fiasco of the current Iraq war has borne out some of Pinter’s dire warnings,” writes Lahr. But plenty of people opposed the war. They don’t all deserve to be hailed as prophets. No, what distinguishes Pinter is something else entirely. His contempt for the west led him to propagandize for an anti-western politician who perpetrated genocide. A bit more plain English from arts critics would be a great public service.
Comments are closed.