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"Victims of Duty"? The Critics, Absurdity, and The Homecoming CHARLES A. CARPENTER As a loyal member of an English department who makes it a point of honor to teach "dramatic literature" rather than theatre and who has indulged in the hyperliterary analysis of theatrical texts, I would be one ofthe last to deprecate the brilliance or doubt the relevance ofthe ldnd ofcriticism that pervades Pinter studies today: sophisticated, ingenious, dispel-the-mystery analysis. Pinter's plays defy augury, and thus encourage such things. In our private reactions to the plays, we probably accept an effect of mystification, bafflement, or bemusement for what it primarily is: a mystifying, baffling, or bemusing moment. But when we contemplate going public, at the lectern or in print, we positively exult in the challenge to plumb the depths of the subtext and expose the hidden secrets of motive, continuity, and intended meaning. ' What we are actually trying to do is to rid our sensitive noses of the niggling tickles the plays provoke. We crave the cathartic sneeze that the texts themselves refuse to concede. We do this even though most of us regard these tickles, along with their denial of relief, as the very essence of Pinter, the signature ofhis dramatic style. Pinter's effects normally combine the absurd, in the quite literal sense that the rationale behind the realistically dramatized situations eludes us to the point of shaldng our intellectual savoir-faire, and the farcical, as our automatic response to this stimulus brings a mockworthy pratfall. In a disarmingly naturalistic context, the bizarre prompts the ludicrous. To apply Bergson's terms, the mechanical is encrusted upon the living; our adaptability is betrayed by a reflex. And we remain banana-peel figures offarce until we recover our ability to adapt flexibly to the disconcerting movement of the play. Pinter's Homecoming may be the most enigmatic work of art since the Mona Lisa, an image its main character, Ruth, evokes. At the turning point of the play, Ruth's professor-husband, Teddy, watches intently as she lies on the living-room couch with one ofhis brothers while the other strokes her hair. His 490 CHARLES A. CARPENTER father, Max, claiming he is broad-minded, calls her "a woman of quality," "a woman of feeling." Shortly after Ruth frees herself she asks Teddy, out of the blue: "Have your family read your critical works?" This provokes the smug Ph.D. to a slightly manic assertion: "To see, to be able to see! I'm the one who can see. That's why 1can write my critical works. Might do you good". have a look at them ... see how certain people can view ... things ... how certain people can maintain ". intellectual equilibrium." His reaction to this intensely disconcerting moment parallels that of Pinter critics who, like Teddy, refuse to let themselves be "lost in it." This is, of course, tbe natural reaction for people whose public image depends upon maintaining their intellectual equilibrium. But it is hardly the appropriate reaction either for Teddy, who restricts his protestations to eating his pimp-brother Lenny's cheese-roll, or for people genuinely experiencing a Pinter play. Whatever else this response may involve, it must surely involve letting oneself be "lost in it." The jolt to one's intellectual eqUilibrium - what Bert States bas dubbed "the shock of nonrecognition'" - must be acknowledged as a validly evoked response. The urge for rational illumination that so often follows - the nose-tickle crying for a sneeze - must be regarded as an integral second stage of tbat evoked response. In experiencing these repeated "Pinteresque" moments, we are put precisely in the dilemma of Camus's "absurd man" described in The Myth of Sisyphus.' We are confronted with bewilderment, disruption, chaos, what Beckett referred to as "this buzzing confusion.'" In response, we involuntarily reach out for clarity, understanding, Godot: the little explanation that is not there. We become like lonesco's Detective in Victims ofDuty, who lays its underpinnings bare: "I don't believe in the absurd. Everything hangs together; everything can be comprehended ... thanks to the achievements of human thought and science."5 Camus's hero, the true believer in absurdity, acknowledges this recurring double...

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