Hitchens on Pinter

Christopher Hitchens, in today's Wall Street Journal (link requires subscription), terms the award of a Nobel to Harold Pinter "a straight and philistine preference for the grotesque":

The Nobel judges have again given their approval to a writer of doggerel; a very poor man's Beckett, a man most celebrated for the long silences that punctuated his stage "dialogue," who would have no reputation of any kind if it were not for the slightly unbelievable character of his public statements. Let us hope, then, that the day when the Nobel Prize is a local and provincial event has been brought closer. Especially in their opinions about peace and literature -- two matters that ought to concern all serious people -- the judges have brought absurdity upon themselves. Let us withdraw our assent from their fool's-gold standard, and see what happens. Let us also hope for a long silence to descend upon the thuggish bigmouth who has strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage for far too long.

Hitchens believes Pinter has produced nothing worth noticing since the 1960s, which is a little harsh. The poetry is dismal and the politics vile, but the screenplays up until the execrable film version of Margaret Atwood's fine novel The Handmaid's Tale are spare and consistently good (especially The French Lieutenant's Woman and the little-noticed Turtle Diary, based on Russell Hoban's novel). Hitchens also castigates last year's winner, Elfriede Jelinek, as a mediocre Austrian Stalinist, which is not harsh at all.