Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Wednesday. He was 78 and lived in London.
The cause was cancer, his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said Thursday.
Mr. Pinter learned he had cancer of the esophagus in 2002. In 2005, when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was unable to attend the awards ceremony at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm but delivered an acceptance speech from a wheelchair in a recorded video.
In more than 30 plays — written between 1957 and 2000 and including masterworks like “The Birthday Party,” “The Caretaker,” “The Homecoming” and “Betrayal” — Mr. Pinter captured the anxiety and ambiguity of life in the second half of the 20th century with terse, hypnotic dialogue filled with gaping pauses and the prospect of imminent violence.
Pinter, one of over 40 Nobel Prize winners who have spoken at the Y, made five appearances at our Poetry Center between 1964 and 1996. You can listen above to the full program of his first on November 12, 1964 which includes a reading of short stories and poems—Tea Party / New Year in the Midlands / A Glass at Midnight / You in the Night / The Drama in April / The Anesthetist’s Pen / Jig / Episode / Afternoon / The Error of Alarm / The Table / The Black and White selection / The Examination—followed by a Q&A where he talks about literary influences, point of view, his opinion of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the classic Beatles vs. Rolling Stones debate.
You can also download the MP3. [32 MB]
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