Transforming dialogue into art

Few recipients of the Nobel literature prize have deserved this honour as much as Harold Pinter, writes Eileen Battersby

Feted throughout the English-speaking world - well at least by the Gate Theatre in Dublin and by one arts programme on BBC - on the occasion of his 75th birthday, dramatist and artist of conscience, Harold Pinter sealed his week of celebrations by winning the Nobel literature prize, not a day too soon. This is one of the most appropriate choices yet made by the Nobel committee. No critic could claim Pinter has won for one work - this is the timely acknowledgment of a major international literary career that is yet to be fully recognised in Britain.

In another context, it could be pure Hollywood: clever angry East End Jewish boy finally takes the laurels, except that few recipients have deserved this honour as much as Pinter, dramatist, screenplay writer, adapter and campaigner. The heir of Beckett, the only writer who said more in fewer words, Harold Pinter is the most important living voice in world theatre. Arthur Miller certainly opened up US theatre for Edward Albee and David Mamet, but it is Pinter who has most brilliantly juxtaposed the surrealist manic absurdity of European theatre with the deadpan, laconic, non-communicative dialogue of living speech.

Above all, Pinter is the master of the long silence and the telling pause, that telling missed beat that transforms a line of dialogue into art. His drama, savage if bizarrely elegant, has always balanced dark comedy with moments of pathos and chilling menace. The first English writer to win the Nobel literature prize since novelist William Golding was honoured in 1983, Pinter has never wasted a word while amassing a large body of important work by exploring the essential profundity of the seemingly banal.

There are many qualities, but should only one be picked to describe his art which deals with moral and emotional confusion, truthful would be the key word. Pinter has listened, felt, expressed and responded. Little more could be asked of any artist. When accepting a prize in Germany in 1970, Pinter who by then had already written three of his most important plays, The Birthday Party (1958), The Caretaker (1960) and The Homecoming (1965) - all modern classics, said, "I can sum up none of my plays, except to say. 'That is what happened. This is what they said. That is what they did.' "

It is a brilliant appraisal, made by the man who knows the work the best, its creator. Just as our minds are full of Shakespeare's words, our imaginations recall Pinter moments - they define life as accurately as they do theatre. Pinteresque is the natural progression of Kafkaesque. There is a bond between both writers; Pinter grasps, as did Kafka before him, the fundamental injustice of officialdom. Co-founder in 1988 with his second wife, historian and writer Lady Antonia Fraser, of the 20 June group, Pinter explained its objective as one of uniting writers and intellectuals in the battle against international tyranny.

Interviews with him have at times been billed rather like prize fights.

Pinter loves cricket with a passion, and hates US foreign policy with as much energy as he can muster; he was an enemy of Thatcherism, he is a champion of individual and cultural freedom. Capable of being engaging and taciturn in the speed of a wink, he is mercurial.

But Pinter the one-time actor who played a youthful Iago to Anew McMaster's Othello, and toured Ireland over three seasons, is aware of his touchy personal image, and in 1995, when accepting another literary prize, recalled being described as "enigmatic, taciturn, terse, prickly, explosive and forbidding", and he followed this with an observation that could have been uttered by one of his characters: "Well, I do have my moods like anyone else."

A mood is one thing, belief is quite another.

When Pinter, who had early in his career described himself as an apolitical writer, became politically committed, there was nothing half-hearted about it, as plays such as One for the Road (1984), Mountain Language (1988) - a devastating exposé about the plight of the Kurdish people at the hands of the Turks - and Party Time (1991) confirm.

Principles and moral choices had always influenced him. The son of a Jewish tailor, Pinter as a boy had experienced anti-Semitic intimidation.

He had also been fined for boycotting National Service.

Look to his anger; it sustains him and his work. There is also the inspired comic timing of his Jewish humour. In Betrayal (1978), a three-hander, the wife, Emma, has been having an affair with Gerry, her husband Robert's best friend.

As the play begins, the affair is over, but Pinter allows the action to unwind by flowing backwards in time. Emma confesses to Robert that she and Gerry are involved.

Robert absorbs this fact. His response is Pinter magic: "I've always liked Gerry. To be honest, I've always liked him rather more than I've liked you. Maybe I should have had an affair with him myself." Barbed, vicious, sad, funny and very true.

In September 1990, Faber quietly published a first novel which had been originally written in the 1950s. It was Pinter's The Dwarfs. Admittedly, much of it had already appeared in a play of the same name staged in 1960.

But this quasi-experimental narrative in which three men and a woman pursue existences of breathtaking boredom in post-war London contains the seeds of the genius which has thrived.

One of the characters, Len, who plays the violin, loves Bach and, heading for a nervous breakdown, remarks during one of many zany exchanges: "Well, I'll have to grant you that. You can't get away from it. It stands to reason. And when you're not in, you're out. Or more accurately, when you're out you're not in."

It predates the wonderful use of repetition with which The Birthday Party opens - the repeated inquiries about the state of the cornflakes. There are the endless discussions about the movements of the cat, while art, life and just about everything else is debated in crazy philosophical tracts.

As in Beckett, a Pinter character alternates between philosopher and idiot. Far more than a forgotten early work, this prose narrative shows Pinter's ear for the absolute truths of absurd realism was formed from the very beginning. As was the flair for dialogue - that ability to have a character, when asked, "how are you?", reply with a cryptic and loaded, "oh, you know."

At 21, Pinter read a magazine extract of Beckett's Watt. He searched a number of libraries, eventually locating a copy of Murphy which, as it had not been borrowed for years, he decided to keep.

By the time Beckett won his Nobel prize in 1969, Pinter was already famous. Now, almost a lifetime later, with works such as Old Times (1971), No Man's Land (1975), Moonlight (1993) and Ashes to Ashes (1996) Pinter, deservedly close on the heels of Grass and Coetzee, fellow writers of conscience, joins the roll of honour. It will be interesting to hear how he responds.

Much criticism has been levelled at the contemporary English novel. Harold Pinter kept the British theatre of the 1950s more than merely alive and well, he elevated it into outstanding multi layered European drama of the heart as well as the mind.

A new production of Betrayal opens at the Gate Theatre, Dublin tonight