one of my heroes, harold pinter, died last week on dec 25th. he was a man of uncommon intellect and integrity. he was also, of course, a man who understood the power of words.

in “weasel words” by john lahr (new yorker, dec 19, 2005) lahr talks about pinter’s obsession with the “psychological truth that he continued to explore brilliantly for half a century: mankind’s passion for ignorance. blindness, as pinter has dramatized it over the years, is something internal. the habit of not seeing is for his characters a sort of narrative device, an evasion of self-awareness that allows them to sustain their stories of themselves; the very syntax of their speech carries them ever farther from a real understanding of their emotions”.

profound - and, in this age of linguistic manipulation, so very relevant.

here is democracy now’s tribute to harold pinter.