Harold Pinter

Critical Studies

by Alan Bold

In Harold Pinter's The Homecoming Max, the domestic tyrant, says of his tearaway days with his friend "We'd walk into a place, the whole room'd stand up, they'd make way to let us pass. You never heard such silence." Pinter's plays make a similarly strong impact.
By general agreement Pinter's dramatic output is uniquely expressive. Though the influence of Beckett and others has been cited, Pinter remains a writer with a tone so unusual it has brought the epithet "Pinteresque" into being. Pinter himself detests the term, and it is time his art was assessed in depth; hence the reason for this volume which brings together essays by various authorities on Pinter's work.

184 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1985

About the author

Alan Norman Bold was a Scottish poet, biographer, and journalist. He was educated at Broughton High School and the University of Edinburgh.

He edited Hugh MacDiarmid's Letters and wrote the influential biography MacDiarmid. Bold had acquainted himself with MacDiarmid in 1963 while still an English Literature student at Edinburgh University. His debut work, Society Inebrious, with a lengthy introduction by MacDiarmid, was published in 1965, during Bold's final university year. This early publication kick-started a prolific poetic career with Bold publishing another three books of verse before the end of the decade, including the ambitious book-length poem The State of the Nation. He also edited The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse (1970) and published a 1973 biography of Robert Burns.

A lifelong heavy drinker who dealt with the boozy life of the poet in such collections as A Pint of Bitter, Bold suffered a heart attack in early 1998 and died in a hospital in Kirkcaldy at the age of 54.