BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA March 21, 2019 Betrayal

“uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry

into oppression's Contents:

Introduction 1

closed rooms” A Brief Author 2-3 Biography

An introduction to 4-6 Betrayal

Harold Pinter’s 7-8 Last Interview

A note from 8 Camila

Notes 9

Page 2

A Brief Author Biography

Early Life Pinter started out as an actor. bring home a homeless man to After studying at the Royal live with them—a man who then Writer and political activist Academy of Dramatic Art for a exerts a strange hold the Harold Pinter is most famous for time, he worked in regional brothers. The play, like many of his plays. Inspired in part theater in the 1950s and Pinter's works, conveys "a world by Samuel Beckett, he created his sometimes used the stage name of perplexing menace," and in it own distinctive style, marked by David Baron. Pinter wrote a Pinter uses "a vocabulary all his terse dialogue and meaningful short play, The Room, in 1957, own," as a critic for The New York pauses. He was the son of a and went on to create his first Times once explained. Jewish tailor and grew up in a full-length drama, The Birthday lower middle-class neighborhood Party. The Birthday (1965), in London. In his grammar school Party premiered in London in considered by some to be his years, Pinter was athletic and 1958 to savage reviews, and masterwork, explored familial especially fond of playing . closed within a week. One critic, tensions. In the play, a man brings Harold Hobson of The Sunday his wife to meet his father and During World War II, Pinter saw Times of London, offered a brothers after a long some of the bombing of his city by dissenting opinion, writing that estrangement. The wife ends up the Germans. He was sent away Pinter was "the most original, leaving him to stay with his to escape the Blitz at one point. disturbing and arresting talent in family. The drama moved to This firsthand experience of war theatrical London," according to Broadway in 1967 and won a and destruction left a lasting the Los Angeles Times. Tony Award—Pinter's only impression on Pinter. At the age Broadway honor. The of 18, he refused to enlist in the Major Works Homecoming was later turned military as part of his national into a film featuring many of its service. A conscientious objector, With 1960's The Caretaker, Pinter original cast, including Ian Holm, he ended up paying a fine for not had his first taste of success. The Terence Rigby and Vivien completing his national service. play is about two brothers who Merchant. Pinter had met

Page 3

Merchant when he was working to highlight the mistreatment of played at the event. as an actor, and the couple had the Kurdish people in Turkey. married in 1956. He and fellow playwright Arthur Pinter succumbed to cancer on Miller had visited Turkey December 24, 2008. He was Around this time, Pinter also together a few years earlier. survived by his second wife, branched out into film, writing writer Antonia Fraser, his son the screenplays for his own Death and Legacy from his first marriage, Daniel, works as well as the works of and his six stepchildren. After being diagnosed with others. He wrote The cancer in 2001, Pinter continued Servant (1963) Pinter's work has inspired and his writing and activism. He and Accident (1967), both informed generations of decried Britain's involvement in directed by Joseph Losey and playwrights, especially Tom the Iraq War, and he called both starring Dirk Bogarde. Losey and Stoppard and David Mamet. U.S. President George W. Pinter worked together on one Pinter's plays are still performed Bush and British Prime more film—1970's The Go- around the world, with new Minister Tony Blair "terrorists," Between, starring Julie audiences experiencing the according to the Financial Times. Christie and Alan Bates. Perhaps distinct, strange and foreboding Pinter expressed some of his one of Pinter's best-known atmosphere so often created by outrage in his poetry, screen adaptations was the late writer. Of Pinter, fellow particularly his 2003 1981's The French Lieutenant's playwright David Hare once said, collection, WAR. In a poem Woman, starring Jeremy "The essence of Pinter's singular entitled "God Bless America," Irons and Meryl Streep. appeal is that you sit down to he wrote: "Here they go again / every play he writes in certain In 1978, Pinter brought to the The Yanks in their armoured expectation of the unexpected," stage another of his best- parade / Chanting their ballads according to the Los Angeles regarded works, the of joy / As they gallop across Times. drama Betrayal. This tale of the big world / Praising infidelity and marital meltdown America's God / The gutters are [https://www.biography.com/ seemed to reflect the writer's clogged with the dead." These people/harold-pinter-9441163] life in some ways, in particular political reflections helped his affair with TV personality Pinter earn the Wilfred Owen Joan Blakewell. He was later Award for poetry. involved with Lady In 2005, Pinter was honored Antonia Fraser who was married with the Nobel Prize for to a member of Parliament and a Literature. The selection mother of six. The pair were committee cited Pinter a writer eventually able to shed their "who, in his plays, uncovers the respective spouses and married precipice under everyday prattle in 1980. Pinter and Fraser, a and forces entry into talented writer in her own right, oppression's closed rooms." became a very popular couple in Some saw the choice of Pinter, literary circles. an antiwar campaigner, as a Pinter's politics became more political statement. He wasn't explicit in his late works. The well enough to accept the prize short play Mountain Language in person, and he gave his Nobel (1988), for instance, was written lecture in a pre-recorded video

Page 4

An introduction to Betrayal

In Harold Pinter's Betrayal, an Kate, negotiating different reticence about speaking, and the affair and its revelation are versions of their shared past. We way their words mirror one portrayed in reverse cannot even be sure whether another: chronological order. William Anna is alive or dead, a ghost, a McEvoy explores how this memory or a guilty projection of Jerry: Well. reversal focuses our attention Kate’s or Deeley’s unconscious. Emma: How are you? on the ways in which meaning The play marks the transition Jerry: All right. and knowledge are from the existential enigmas of Emma: You look well. constructed, and on the ability Pinter’s earlier work to texts that Jerry: Well, I’m not all that well, of language to hide as much as deal with how perception is really. it reveals. subjective and memory can be The word ‘well’ occurs four times manipulated. First performed on 15 November in five lines, as if they are looking 1978 at the National Theatre in So what leads Esslin to for ways to open communication London, Betrayal was Harold call Betrayal a ‘major stylistic but have to resort to a repeated Pinter’s seventh full-length play. change’? In many ways, it is a word to fill the gap. As the scene Martin Esslin says that it much more conventional play than continues, the two characters ‘represents a major stylistic change, Pinter’s earlier works. It features enter into a complex game of even something like a new a middle-class love-triangle in the tentative self-exposure, testing beginning in Pinter’s development form of two men and a woman, each other’s emotional as a playwright’. Up until that point, Jerry, his best friend Robert and boundaries, not sure but wanting Pinter had been firmly associated Robert’s wife Emma, who are, as to know how the other feels with the 'Theatre of the Absurd', a Robert Clyman puts it, ‘stylized without betraying their own term Esslin himself had coined to variations on characters we vulnerability to rejection or describe the work of writers such already know from the more indifference. as Samuel Beckett and Eugene densely coded genre of The play progresses in a series of Ionesco which subverted realism realism’. We learn about an extra- snapshots from the previous nine and staged the irrational instead. In marital affair, watch the years, its overall arc taking us plays such as The Birthday characters as they pursue it, lie back to 1968, when the affair Party (1958), The Caretaker (1960) about it and find out about it; and began. The reverse chronology is and The Homecoming (1964), Pinter feel a strong undertow of regret not smooth though: three scenes had offered audiences often and guilt as passions cool and the take us slightly forward a month working-class characters trapped in chilly realities of betrayal leave or two in a specific year, while the threatening scenarios – ‘comedies their imprint. time gap between the scenes of menace’ as they were famously sometimes extends to three years dubbed – in which motives were What Esslin is alerting us to is the way Betrayal completely (as in the final Scenes, 8 and 9). unexplained and violence simmered The overall effect is a rhythm of beneath the surface. transforms our role as readers and spectators by recounting the crisis and dilation and a temporal From the 1970s onwards, with events largely in reverse instability as the past is plays such as Old Times (1971), chronological order, starting with reconstructed for us. What Pinter’s work shifted gear away the end of the affair between Jerry emerges is a sense that all of the from absurdist paranoia to tackle and Emma, and taking us, over the characters have betrayed each questions of memory and its course of nine scenes, back to its other: husbands have betrayed unreliability. Often paired beginning. When we first see Jerry wives and vice versa, friends have with Betrayal, Old Times features and Emma in Scene 1, set in a pub betrayed friends, by conspiracy or three characters, Deeley, Anna and in 1977, we quickly note their omission, sometimes

Page 5

thoughtlessly, sometimes out of to seduce or to wound, to Theatre’ from 1976, he says: love. threaten or to intimidate. So often, below the word spoken, is In Enoch Brater’s words, One upshot of this shift of focus the thing known and unspoken. My in Betrayal, ‘[i]t is not so much onto the plane of language is characters tell me so much and no what we know but when we know that the characters no longer more … most of the time we’re it that is responsible for the real seem like real people but are inexpressive, giving little away, tension’. More than this, the play more like ‘vehicles in a kind of unreliable, elusive, evasive, is about how our knowledge information game’. Pinter has obstructive, unwilling. But it’s out of exceeds, equates to or lags behind told us how their story ends, so these attributes that a language the characters’. As spectators, we we focus instead on decoding arises. A language, I repeat, where observe scenes throughout with their double-meanings, where under what is said, another thing is the irrealistic foreknowledge of everyday exchanges are tense being said. how things will end. Rarely has with subtext because we know Pinter’s Betrayal is full of this kind dramatic irony, where the what happens in the future. In of subtext, and he has given us audience know more than the Scene 3, set in 1975, when Jerry the key with which to decode it. characters, been used to such says to Emma ‘I don’t think we It is a play which teaches us that devastating effect. don’t love each other’, the double negative claims our words have histories, even Arguably then, the play is as much attention because we have just silences have histories, and to be about our role as readers as it is witnessed the frostiness of their attuned to these. It leads us to about themes such as friendship, relationship two years down the think about dialogue in relation 'homosociality' (i.e. relationships line. Even more striking is the to intersubjectivity. What we say between men, often mediated by way Pinter is able to generate – and how we say it – is shaped their relationships with women) alarm via language which, out of by how we expect our words will and sexual power games. Indeed, context, seems perfectly be interpreted, whether we think for Clyman, the time-reversal mundane. All Jerry has to do at we will be interrupted, whether ‘dispels the illusion of real the end of Scene 7 is ask Robert we want the other person to life’ altogether. Instead, it focusses ‘How is Emma?’ and because we speak first and so on. For Pinter, our attention on how ‘certain know Robert has just found out a listener’s actions, a flinch, a sigh, scenes have been carefully chosen about Jerry’s affair with his wife a gesture, will have an impact on for presentation’. In other words, but Jerry isn’t aware of this (and a speaker’s words, and in Betrayal, despite its realist won’t be for another four the director’s great challenge is frame, Betrayal is meta-theatrical years), the question sends a jolt to capture how Pinter’s elliptical and meta-linguistic, making us through us. dialogue registers the complex think about how meaning is verbal and non-verbal cues constructed or fabricated and The characters’ dialogue is full of characters give one another about how the very same words digressions, evasions and about their emotional states. can mean entirely different things contradictions, to the extent , who directed Michael to different people depending on that the drama of this play Gambon, Penelope Wilton and what pre-knowledge they bring to occurs at the micro-level of Daniel Massey in the 1978 a situation. We end up focussing syntax, through subtext, ellipses premiere of the play, has said that less on what the characters do or and pauses, rather than at the Pinter’s writing ‘allows him to say, on the moral rights and macro-level of plot revelations, explore the instinctive hostilities wrongs of their actions, and climaxes and resolutions. between human beings. They concentrate instead on the power In Pinter’s essay ‘Writing for the fight duels not with swords, but of language to confess or conceal,

Page 6

with words and silences’. But this is only part of the story in Betrayal. The play reverses beginnings and endings. The first scene ends with Emma’s words ‘It’s all all over’, though our understanding at that stage of what lies behind the characters’ tongue-tied zigzagging between intimacy and defensiveness is only just starting. The characters’ hostility is shown to be far from instinctive but is revealed instead to be a compound of love, loss, regret and vulnerability. Pinter’s great achievement in Betrayal is to make a detective story out of a play whose ending we know from the start. Instead of being absorbed by the events of the narrative, we become calculating analysers of language, complicit with the characters’ lies, shocked by our perception of the way banal words can mask such powerful emotions and contain such painful ironies.

[https://www.bl.uk/20th-century- literature/articles/an-introduction- to-betrayal]

Page 7

Harold Pinter’s Last Interview

Harold Pinter [...] gave his was the life." there was another schoolboy, in last interview to Andy Bull, of uniform, and he saw me, and said: Pinter's study was heavy with The Guardian, on a subject "Hutton's out!" I could have killed the clutter of a cricket fan. On very dear to the playwright's him. Really. It was very important one wall was an oil portrait of heart: cricket. Here we to me that I was going to see himself, wearing whites, publish the interview for the Hutton. So, you see, I have knocking a drive away to the leg first time. golden memories." side. The shelves creaked under "I tend to think that cricket is the his cricket library, including all His playing days lapsed after greatest thing that God created 145 editions of the Wisden childhood and did not resume on earth," Harold Pinter once Almanack. On the mantelpiece until he had a family of his own. "I said, "certainly greater than sex, were photographs and didn't start playing again until the although sex isn't too bad either." memorabilia of the Gaieties, the 60s. I took my son, who was then No harm, then, that the game wandering club side of which about nine, to school for nets and should be the subject of his last Pinter was captain, and, when he I watched him be coached. I interview, given in late October at gave up playing, chairman. suddenly thought 'well why don't his home in London. His health Downstairs, on the wall was a I have a net myself?' I hadn't failing, Pinter was in nostalgic framed copy of WG Grace's played since school you know, mood, recalling a childhood in autograph. but the next week I got some Hackney, east London, during the whites and started to have some His favourite, though, was the blitz and his time as an evacuee. "I coaching from a fellow called England great Len Hutton. He first watched cricket during the Fred Pelozzi, a cricketer of Italian first saw him as an evacuee in war. At one point we were all descent but he was a cockney . "I was sent for a brief evacuated from our house when actually, and he was a bloody period to , and I went to there was an air raid. We opened good player. see some kind of game up at the door and our garden, with this Headingley. I caught Len Hutton, "And after a few weeks he said large lilac tree, was alight all along who was on leave from the 'why don't you come and play for the back wall. We were evacuated army. I fell in love with him at the club I play for?' So I said 'OK'. straight away. Though not before I first sight, as it were. I became I went out for my first game for took my cricket bat. passionate about Yorkshire Gaieties [] at I think No 6. "I used to get up at five in the because of Hutton really. It is He was the only fellow I knew, morning and play cricket. I had a my great regret that I could have they were all new to me, and a great friend who is still going – he met him, but I was too shy." fellow bowled the first ball at me, lives in Australia – called Mick, and I hit it plumb in the middle of Cricket was not in Pinter's Mick Goldstein. He used to live the bat, really a beautiful shot. family. His father did not play. "I around the corner from me in Straight back to the bowler, who learned about the game at Hackney, and we were very close caught it. So I was out first Hackney Downs Grammar. We to the River Lea, and there were bloody ball. That was my first used to play a lot. A lot of my fields. We walked down to the introduction to Gaieties. But I colleagues at the time were fields; there'd be nobody about – carried on playing for them, and very, very keen on cricket. We it would really very early in the eventually I became captain." felt so intensely about it. I morning, and there would be a remember going to Lord's, It was cricket's endless potential tree we used as a . We walking through Regent's Park for narrative, the games within a would take it in turns to bat and on my way, one early evening. game, that appealed most. bowl; we would be Lindwall, And coming away from Lord's "Drama happens in big cricket Miller, Hutton and Compton. That

Page 8

matches. But also in small cricket A NOTE FROM CAMILA matches," he said. "When we play, my club, each thing that happens is dramatic: the gasps that follow a I suggest that apart from reading miss at slip, the anger of an lbw the play, you also listen to it to decision that is turned down. It is hear the nuances of intonation the same thing wherever you play, and meaning. The dialogue is very really." pared down, the stage directions He had been looking forward to are minimal, so that the reader or seeing England play Australia next theatergoer must recreate the summer. "I don't watch as much underlying thoughts and professional cricket as I used to, motivations of the characters. because I'm not moving very well these days, but I used to do a lot of it. And there is nothing better https://www.youtube.com/watch? really. I had a piece of very good v=XBERB1MmObs fortune three years ago and I managed to get a box at Lord's. I was there to see South Africa last year, and I shall certainly be there next year to see .

"I don't know whether it is the same game these days. But I have a number of step-grandchildren, three boys. And they think of nothing else but cricket. They play cricket in the snow. So it is still very much alive actually. I think the facilities have been denuded, and there are now all the other beguilements of sport, and this obsession with bloody football. But my grandchildren still they get up at five in the morning and play cricket, just as I did myself.

"Cricket, the whole thing, playing, watching, being part of the Gaieties, has been a central feature of my life."

[https://www.theguardian.com/ culture/2008/dec/26/harold-pinter- final-interview]

BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA

Avinguda de Josep Tarradellas i Joan, 44 Telèfon: 93 403 26 30 [email protected] Els dilluns, de 15.30 a 21 h De dimarts a divendres, de 9 a 21 h Els dissabtes, d’10 a 14 h i de 15 a 20 h Setmana Santa, Nadal i estiu: horaris especials

www.bibliotequeslh.cat

barcelonabookclub.wordpress.com

Notes

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______