Pinter in Play by Susan Hollis Merritt, and: Harold Pinter: A Casebook ed. by Lois Gordon (review)

Book Reviews 619 SUSAN HOLLIS MERRITT. Pinter in Play. Durham and London: Duke University Press 1990. Pp. xxi, 343. $39·95· LOIS GORDON, ed. Harold Pinter: A Casebook. New York ilnd London: Garland Publishing Co. 1990. Pp. xlv, 277· $37.00. Pinter ill Play begins by infonning us that by 1978 a bibliography of "over 2000 items relating to Pinter" (p. 3) had been published. Susan Merritt regards this growing abu.ndance of commentary with a kind of excitement, as contributing to progress. Because she recognises that "A great deal of Pinter criticism is about other Pinter criticism, and the industry seems self-perpetuating," her aims are metacritical, the main one being "to investigate the modes of such production" (p. 22). The italics hint at something portentous, but what she offers is a sort of guided tour through a number of critics. She starts with an account of some general theoretical positions, chosen apparently to represent a variety of views as propounded by, for instance, Morse Peckham, F. E. SparsholI, Stanley Fish and Terry Eagleton. Her purpose is to provide a larger context for a consideration of some post-modernist criticism of Pinter's work, with bows towards Foucault and Derrida. The later chapters describe and comment on the work of various writers on Pinter - I list the main figures discussed - under such headings as "semantic uncertainty" (Austin Quigley, Thomas van Laan); "Searches for Meaning" (Steven Gale, Katherine Burkman); "Psychoanalytic Maneuvers" (Martin Esslin, Lucina Gabbard); "Language Games" (Martin Esslin, Austin Quigley, Susan Melrose, Deirdre Burton), Cultural Politics" (c. W. E. Bigsby, Elizabeth Sakellaridou), "Value Judgments" (largely on reviews of performances of the plays), and concluding with "The Case of Pinter: Toward Theory as Practice in Critical and Cultural Change," a last chapter which contains a good deal about the author. She is not concerned with value judgments, but writes out of a vision of change which can only be brought about by taking into account the circumstances of the critic: "If we want to improve cultural criticism, if we want to effect important change in and through it, we must try to improve our own relationships" (p. 269). It is a worthwhile concern to ask how critics can be more socially responsible, but it is hard to see what Himportant changes" they might bring about. Susan Merritt ends by offering critics guidelines for change, emphasising collaboration in writings to be produced by "research collectives" (p. 273), and encouraging critics to scrutinise their motives. As an example she includes a brief autobiography, detailing "resistance to change" she has encountered in her professional life, and describing the experiences that led to the project for the book. This project involved consultations with other critics, personal interviews to find out why they interpreted Pinter their way. Her reports on them often include a short biography. since their "other social roles" are as important as their roles as critics; so Lucy Gabbard "is not only a scholar who produced a psychoanalytic study of Pinter's plays, but also the mother of two sons ... who have themselves together recently produced a book on psychoanalysis and film" (p. 269). 620 Book Reviews Interesting as this infonnation is. I remain unclear as to its bearing on "critical and cultural change." It seems that on the one hand, Susan Merritt has a vision of criticism for ever spinning down the ringing grooves of change, and somehow effecting larger changes: "Pinter criticism, and dramatic criticism and theory along with it, progresses, advances, as it were" (p. 85). Critics have to get along with one another if they are "to advance the work of criticism" (p. 149). But where is criticism heading in this "advance',? From another point of view it may look like the dead end of a selfsustaining academic industry, whose main purpose is to play an appropriate role in the professionaiisation of departments of English in colleges and universities. A Harold Pinter Society was established in 1986, and a Pinter Review in 1987, which includes new annual bibliographies of critical essays. The endless proliferation of commentary seems to have little to do with notions of social responsibility or collaboration; Societies and reviews contribute to debate, but not to...