Harold Pinter by Arnold Hinchliffe (review)

448 MODERN DRAMA February theater of the absurd; the papers on Beckett and Ionesco and, even though less, on Genet, seem singularly dated. The opening statement of the Genet article is illuminating in that sense: "People talk a lot about Genet and very little about his work." Some French scholars still seem too unaware of the work done over here. Provocative and helpful in contrast are the two articles dealing one with contemporary French playwrights and history, the other with the tragedies of decolonisation . Carefully edited, and as the index shows, with ride range, this volume , within its format and limits, brings valuable contributions to our knowledge of the contemporary stage. GERMAINE BRiE Institute for Research in the Humanities University of Wisconsin HAROLD PINTER, by Arnold Hinchliffe, Twayne Publishers, Inc., New York, 1967. This is a book which everyone who is seriously interested in Harold Pinter should have at hand. The author has the initial advantage of being English and so recognizes all the settings and classes of people, the English world in which all of Pinter's situations are placed, much of which is lost upon American audiences. In addition he is a teacher and specialist in British drama at Manchester University , has spent time in this country, and written about symbolism in the American novel. The book consists mainly of collected material and is a compressed account of Pinter's career so far and its impact on the present-day literary scene. Hinchliffe discusses the various trends and "schools" of modern drama, comparing and relating Pinter's works with them, summarizes the action of each piece, and gives us selected critiques and interpretations from the critical writing which followed the various productions. He treats in turn the stage plays, television plays, radio scripts, and film scripts, with accounts of their adaptation from one medium to another. A chapter each is devoted to The Caretaker, which he sees as possibly the most important English play of modern times, faultless in construction and perfectly realized, and The Homecoming, which he finds a strange dissection of a violent, distorted family. The book is completed by a lengthy bibliography and plentiful notes which should be of real interest to the student. It is not, therefore, a book to read if one is looking for new ways of approaching and grasping Pinter or for profound probing of the author's own. Nor is it a book to read if one wishes to learn about symbolism or allegory. As nearly always happens in the search for meaning in Pinter's work, there is some overstraining here to lay hands on symbols and allegory where there are none, but for the most part the author himself stands clear while presenting the various interpretations (some far-fetched) of other critics. After briefing a number of these attempts to impose "surrealistic" meanings on The Caretaker, he repeats with finality a statement of Pinter's own, that it is "simply a play about two brothers and a caretaker." Nevertheless, Hinchliffe does get trapped in the pitfall himself upon occasion-he finds the characters in The Homecoming "allegorical," but does not point out any allegory for them to function in. In his preface he says that Pinter is "one of Britain's most important twentiethcentury dramatists-in my opinion, the most important," and in his conclusion he again professes this belief. He sees this playwright as having all the important qualities, "topical, local, and universal," as well as being free from the need to provide answers or formulas. "Pinter is not in the least interested in proving 1969 BOOK REVIEWS 449 something as is Shaw or Wesker or even, as Osborne wishes to do, in providing what he considers to be the essential evidence. Pinter sets out to evoke rather than depict." AUGUSTA WALKER ETUDE SUR LE THEATRE DADA ET SURREALISTE, by Henri Behar, Gallimard , Paris, 1967, 356 pp. 22 Francs. This is the most careful and sensitive work yet published on the Dada-Surrealist theater in France, worthy in every respect of comparison with Martin Esslin's earlier and more international Theater of the Absurd (1961). Where the latter wanders urbanely from country to country, from tradition to...