The Mumpsimus

This is the eighth in a series of posts leading up to this blog's tenth anniversary on August 18. In each post, I look back on one year, sometimes specifically and sometimes generally. All the posts can be found  here . 2005 was a big year around these here parts, as the blog was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. I went to the World Fantasy Convention and wrote up a report of that experience here. It was an exciting time. From my perspective now, though, 2005 doesn't seem like all that great a year for actual blog posts,. There are lot of them — 2005 is second only to 2004 in the number of individual posts — but most of them are quick links, bits of news, etc. The stuff that I now will just throw on Twitter , or ignore altogether. This is reassuring, actually, because I often look back on the number of posts in 2005 and 2004 with fondness and even a certain awe — how did I ever write so much? (My life was no less busy and crazy back then; indeed, it was busier and...

Harold Pinter has died . Here are the last words from one of his last plays, Celebration : Silence. The WAITER stands alone. WAITER When I was a boy my grandfather used to take me to the edge of the cliffs and we'd look out to sea. He bought me a telescope. I don't think they have telescopes anymore. I used to look through this telescope and sometimes I'd see a boat. The boat would grow bigger through the telescopic lens. Sometimes I'd see people on the boat. A man, sometimes, and a woman, or sometimes two men. The sea glistened. My grandfather introduced me to the mystery of life and I'm still in the middle of it. I can't find the door to get out. My grandfather got out of it. He got right out of it. He left it behind him and he didn't look back. He got that absolutely right. And I'd like to make one further interjection. He stands still. Slow fade.

Soon after Harold Pinter won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature , I thought about writing something about his films, because I've seen quite a few, and read many of his screenplays. But I hadn't done any of that recently, so I wanted to refresh myself before spouting off in public. I decided to start reviewing Pinter's film work with some of his earliest movies: the three directed by Joseph Losey . I own an old VHS tape of The Servant , and was able to borrow a now-out-of-print DVD of Accident and a VHS of The Go-Between . I watched them in the order they were made, and then read the scripts (in Five Screenplays ). Each film is based on a book, but of them I have only read Nicholas Mosley's Accident . The Servant may be the best introduction to Pinter that exists. Apparently, both Pinter and Losey had separately thought of adapting Robin Maugham's novella to the screen, and through various negotiations, were able to bring their efforts together and ge...

I expect I'll have more to say about Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize , because I have admired his plays for a long time, but for now I just want to make a quick note about his politics. Pinter is an aggressively political man, though, and his controversial statements have made it relatively easy for some of the more ignorant and illiterate denizens of the American right wing to proclaim that Pinter won the Nobel for his political views. Pinter himself seems to think this could be true . And it could be. But it's irrelevant, because even if Pinter were a neo-Nazi, the fact is, he's one of the two or three most influential and enduring playwrights alive. There are no irrefutable, objective ways to judge a writer's worth, and there will always be dissenters, because tastes vary. But the tests of time and influence are useful ones -- a writer who influences the work of other writers, and whose own work survives for multiple generations, has made a valuable contributi...

REBECCA: Guess where I went after tea? To the cinema. I saw a film. DEVLIN: Oh? What? REBECCA: A comedy. DEVLIN: Uh-huh? Was it funny? Did you laugh? REBECCA: Other people laughed. Other members of the audience. It was funny. DEVLIN: But you didn't laugh? REBECCA: Other people did. It was a comedy. There was a girl...you know...and a man. They were having lunch in a smart New York restaurant. He made her smile. DEVLIN: How? REBECCA: Well...he told her jokes. DEVLIN: Oh, I see. REBECCA: And then in the next scene he took her on an expedition to the desert, in a caravan. She'd never lived in a desert before, you see. She had to learn how to do it. Pause. DEVLIN: Sounds very funny. --from Ashes to Ashes by Harold Pinter , Nobel laureate